Picture this. You're a 20 year old girl whose sent to an asylum after your stepfather framed you for murdering your sister and attempting to rape you before he does. In that mental asylum you're trained by a douche as a burlesque dancer given that half the asylum is a burlesque club and as you do, you enter a fantasy that involves destroying everything so you can escape from that asylum.
In an acronym, WTF?!?!
That is the entire plot of Sucker Punch about a group of mental patients/erotic dancers led by Babydoll (Emily Browning) going into a range of fantasies to find four valuable items not only free themselves from their pains, but also to escape the mental institution they're situated. The asylum is headed by an Eastern European psychiatrist (Carla Gugino) and Blu (Oscar Issacs)
When it comes to director Zack Snyder, it is truly polarising. Some people love or hate his visual style. Some say it's boring, others find it more artistic. But I don't get the entire hatred against him by geeks and internet critics because Snyder used to direct the magnificent yet flawed graphic novel adaptation Watchmen and the well-crafted animation Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Gahoole.
In here however Snyder just truly messes up.
Let me requote the last sentence because to say this is truly a mess is an understatement. It's not entirely awful. It's just terrible. First of all, full marks for Snyder crafting every action sequence to such a high level of art. It's brilliantly cinematographed and as much as you hate Snyder, you'll no doubt know that his movies are somewhat visually stimulating. Unfortunately every sequence feels like a video game.
But this movie is never stimulating to the entire point that it's not even a movie. This is a poorly acted, poorly plotted and poorly placed piece that has gave you no point to why you should be even watching this film. It feels like Snyder is so obsessed with his "achievement" for directing Watchmen that he just brings in the most unnessary elements here. As soon as we entered the lives of these girls, the tackiness shows and becomes a watermark in the history of contemporary cinema. It has no plot, no characters and the action becomes so ludicrous.
When you have a cast of young and really hot actresses that includes Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone and Vanessa Hudgens and assign these women to Snyder, to me, I'll be damned. He's never a director of actresses since all of the heroines are terrible as they have no character, no growth and no emotion. Seeing Carla Gugino whipping up a phony European accent as a burlesque teacher shows that she's offered the most ridiculous characters to be played since Nicholas Cage. Not even Oscar Issacs can help. I just hated him playing the owner Blu of the mental asylum.
The plot. There is no way that you can comprehend the movie without the plot even if it has an outline. It is so illogical in many ways like how did one of the girls plan to find these items in fantasies. And how does Babydoll enter into a fantasy. All I get was Browning closing her eyes and imagine a WWII scenery and at the end the audience gave a standing ovation when she is doing nothing. When Snyder wrote the screenplay (this is his first orignal film), he hadn't realize how many movies he rips off. The mental institution is from Shutter Island, the fantasies came from Inception and the opening sequence turns Chicago into tastless cold soup
As soon as the movie reaches it's last half hour, where Blu's about to rape Babydoll, it just feels so blantant and offensive.
This is a curse for Snyder as there is a dash of doubt upon him as he directs the upcoming Superman movie with Christopher Nolan as the producer. Sucker Punch is a failure and not even a single sample of music could help.
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