Zach Snyder’s action/fantasy “Sucker Punch” tells the dark tale of a young woman whom is wrongfully committed into a mental asylum by her evil stepfather. Once inside, she has to deal with a lot of other scumbag men before she finally retreats into her own imagination. Here she imagines elaborate battles with dragons, giant samurai warriors, robots, and zombie soldiers (not in that order, of course) in an effort to escape the sexual torment of her male captors. It is through these fantasies that she is given the inspiration for how she, and her fellow inmates, can escape the prison. And I thought Buzz and the "Toy Story" gang had it bad at that daycare center!
Snyder (director of “300”) has described this visually audacious film as “Alice In Wonderland with machine guns." There is absolutely no tongue in that comments cheek. He cranks his energetic visual style up to 11 (and beyond) as his heroines battle all kinds of other-worldly enemies while the laws of physics are left sliced & diced by samurai swords. Snyder is an imaginative visual filmmaker who conceives elaborate action sequences and then dares to let us actually SEE them! He doesn’t clutter his work through quick-cuts and bad shaky cam (which far too many modern action pictures rely on.) Instead, he uses a lot of fast and slow motion, as if to say, “hey, look at how badass the power of imagination can be!” Of course, at times, this over-the-top visual style does border on self-parody. However, there is so much visual flair and imagination filling the frame that I can forgive it.
What I cannot quite forgive is the story. It is far too dreary and, at times, slow to really work as a whole. The “women-in-prison” plot never seemed to fully connect properly with the big fantasy sequences. Also, the fantasy sequences lack suspense because we know they are just fantasies. Since the main characters are never in any real danger, these sequences tend to feel disconnected and pointless in the grand scheme of the story. Also, in these fantasies, there are no rules; our heroes are capable of doing whatever they want which then asks the question: if they can do whatever they want, does it really matter that they can do it all? It is also odd how the movie seems to fetishize these scantily clad machine gun-toting young women. It’s as if Snyder wants us to be aroused by these images, yet the constant torment and mistreatment of these women throughout the film makes this idea impossible, and just plain creepy.
The bottom line is “Sucker Punch” is a mixed bag. It is not a bad film; it is far too ambitious to be written-off as just another piece of mindless multiplex fodder. However, as much as I admired the visuals, Snyder’s ambition may have exceeded his reach in trying to make this story work. As the movie went on, I continued to enjoy Snyder’s boundless imagination, but found myself enjoying this dreary slog of a story less and less. It also didn’t help to be hit over the head with one of those final narrations that sums up the entire message of the movie. Sucker punched, indeed.
Movie Theater Experience
I saw "Sucker Punch" on March 25th at Marcus Theaters in Oakdale. Of all of the theaters I have visited in Minnesota, this is my absolute favorite! They have a screen called the "Ultra-screen" which is twice the size of the average movie screen. There is nothing quite like seeing a big special effects movie in this theater; the surround sound is, at times, even good enough to drown out those chatty Cathy dolls that like to sit right next to everyone else and regale them with their oh-so-witty running commentary of the movie. Hey, here's an idea: SHUT UP! Those Hollywood screenwriters just might be more clever than you, so maybe you should listen. And If not for them, then how about for your fellow paying brothers & sisters who really don't want to listen to you bomb jokes one after the other about the movie. Give us all a break and stay home. DVR some re-runs of some crappy TV show and direct your humor there! Hey, it looks like "Jersey Shore" is on. Fire away!
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