Sucker Punch is aptly named, because--as the term implies--people
coming to this movie with preconceived notions will find themselves belted across
the face by the reality of the actual story that director Zac Snyder presents.
The problem is, on the surface, Sucker Punch looks pretty much like your average
popcorn film; it’s loaded with enough flashy CGI visuals to stock several summer
popcorn films--yet despite this, the subject matter the film deals with is far
more solemn than the usual air-headed piece of fluff that passes for entertainment
these days.
And this dark story of a young woman being imprisoned in a mental
hospital is what ultimately works in favor of Sucker Punch. It’s a movie that
tries to pass along a message, and one that’s worth listening to. Emily Browning
stars as Baby Doll, a young woman who, while fighting off the lecherous advances
of her stepfather, accidentally kills her younger sister with a tragically wayward
bullet. Snyder handles these early scenes of potential molestation with great
horror and suspense, conveying everything visually, with no dialogue at all.
I felt as if I were watching a silent movie during these sequences. The creepy
stepfather not only condemns Baby Doll to the mental institution--which is your
typically cliché snake pit, where brutalized patients are worse off then when
they were out in the real world--but he also pays off an orderly to schedule Baby
Doll with a prefrontal lobotomy, which will wipe her memory of any and all abuse
at his hands. Baby Doll escapes the dreary monotony of everyday life at the asylum
through a series of high fantasy scenes, among which are ones where she’s a kick-ass warrior adept in
combat with a variety of imposing villains through the ages.
Starting in medieval Japan, then a cyberpunk First World War; onto a sword &
sorcery-filled Second World War battlefield, and finally, a science fiction universe with a dash of
the Vietnam War, Baby Doll and her comrades are super warriors in sequences that are
astoundingly good eye candy, and are well-worth seeing the movie for alone. On the
surface, these scenes appear to have all the gravitas of a video game. Yet Snyder
seems to indicate that the battles in these far off fantasy worlds are really no
different than the more mundane everyday struggles that we fight on a daily
basis. It's the same type of opponents on a different battlefield.
In this sense, Sucker Punch seeks to awaken the fighter who resides within us
all. But not to face bullies and bureaucrats with ninja swords in real life--rather,
to stand up to them and fight for whatever one believes in.
The underlying message in the film ("You have all the weapons you need. Now fight.") is
a worthwhile one to pass on in a dreary world where justice is often overwhelmed
by greed. But sadly, this message was largely ignored by many who couldn’t see
past the hot babes blasting away in the CGI scenes. It's their loss.
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