Cool Visuals, Beautiful Women, What Could Go Wrong?

Note:  Nothing is spoiled past the first 30 min of the movie.

    “Sucker Punch” is an over-the-top stylized action film following five beautiful broken girls with a need to break free.  The film opens with a stage, a theme that re-occurs through-out the entire film; showing the lead in the Sucker Punch Squad girls Baby Doll (Emily Browning) sobbing on her bed as her mother passes away in the other room.  Shortly after the funeral the evil step-father rips open the mother’s will only to find that everything is left to Baby Doll and her younger sister.  Baby Doll fearing for her sisters life gets a gun and shoots it at her stepfather, only to miss him and accidentally killing her sister.  Seeing an opportunity with the younger one dead he has Baby Doll committed, and bribes an orderly known as Blue (Oscar Isaac) to forge a signature to have Baby Doll lobotomized.

     The film takes place in three different settings, the first being the reality, a dark, rundown insane asylum.  The second being a high class orphanage burlesque house.  The third (the only part you really see in the trailers) is the dream world inside Baby Dolls mind.  Apart from the first 10 minutes and last 5 minutes, its the last 2 settings that you see for the remainder of the film.

     Here Baby Doll meets her entourage of beaten down bad-ass girls, Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung), Rocket (Jena Malone), and Rocket’s older sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish).  When Blue forces Baby Doll to dance so she can have the perfect routine for when the “High Roller” comes for her in 5 days, she dives into the dream world in her mind where she discovers her mentor (Scott Glenn).  He informs her that to escape this place she will need five things; a map, fire, a knife, a key and the last is a mystery.  After an unnecessary boss battle against 15 foot tall samurai warriors, Baby Doll comes back to discover everyone is in awe of her dance.  Nobody could take their eyes off Baby Doll; which is where she discovers how to get the things she needs to escape.  She will dance while her Sucker Punch Squad does the dirty work.  Every time she dances the film jumps to the dream world in Baby Doll’s mind.  Where Sucker Punch Squad have lots of guns, awesome acrobatics, and the ability to take on hordes of enemies unscathed.

     Walking out of the movie all I could think about was if Baby Doll’s dance was so hypnotic and moving, why wasn’t it ever shown?  It just made me more interested in wanting to see what she did that made everyone in the room stop and and do nothing but watch, rather than see the pretty special effects.  You can argue that if they showed the dance it would have taken you out of the dream sequence.  But I think with the right editing, cutting to her dance could have made for some very, very cool scenes in the movie.  

     “Sucker Punch” takes on a lot of its influence from Video Games, “The Matrix” movies and music videos.  Which when you look at the movies target demographic (males ages 13-30), it’s a two hour wet dream.  Don’t get me wrong the film is visually bewitching.  But without a good story to back it up it the movie crashes.  This is the weak link in chain of this movie.  It’s story bland, predictable, and full of holes.  From the first visit to Baby Doll’s world to last I never felt like it was amounting to anything, it didn’t fell like it was getting closer to a climax.  The ending where the three different realities come together and forge the story was executed pretty poorly.  Poorly enough that it confused the group I went with, and I struggled trying to explain it to them. 

     The soundtrack to this movie is it’s strongest appendage.  Covers and remixes of famous songs, make this movie feel like the best musical you seen since Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.”  The visuals paired with this heavy, industrial rock versions of these songs blend so well, that the majority of what people will remember the most of this movie is the music.  One scene in particular is on a train where the Sucker Punch Squad gets the knife, the cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows” originally by The Beatles plays. 

     Beautiful girls, mesmerizing visuals, and an amazing soundtrack unfortunately weren’t enough to save this movie.  Don’t get me wrong it’s a fun movie, but is it worth the pricy ticket cost to see this movie?  See it at matinee if you have the choice.  With the bland story line it’s hard to not be bored outside of the dream sequences.  I look forward to Zach Snyder’s cut of this film later in the year on Blu-Ray.  In hopes that it will bring life to this flatlined story.  

RATING:  2 1/2 Stars out of 5