Visuals in search of a reason to be

Rating: 5/10 (3 June 2011)

It is a bit amusing, when you think about it, that the first film from director Zack Snyder that is not an adaptation of another medium or a remake is easily his worst film to date. The film in question is Sucker Punch, and it is the ultimate embodiment of what people have complained about much of today's cinema: it is a good looking, painstakingly designed and visually realized film that is almost completely hollow at its core.
The plot of Sucker Punch, what there is of one, focuses on Baby Doll (Emily Browning), who has been through some traumatic experiences recently. Her mother has died, leaving her and her sister in the clutches of their abusive and self-absorbed step-father (Does Hollywood ever portray step-fathers any other way?). When an accident claims Baby Doll's sisters' life, the circumstances are made to appear as if Baby Doll did the deed, so her step-father has her committed to a mental hospital where he has arranged for her to be lobotomized in a few days. Once she is incarcerated in the hospital, she imagines her situation in a fantasy environment, where she and her fellow inmates, including Sweet Pea (Abby Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung), are dancers in a strip club run by the malevolent Blue (Oscar Issac) who are forced to perform for customers and Blue plans to deliver Baby Doll into the hands of the High Roller (Jon Hamm) by the end of the week.
To escape this situation, Baby Doll hatches a plan to steal several items they need (a key, a weapon, etc.) from the facility, and to facilitate these thefts without garnering the attention of the staff, Baby Doll distracts the club staff by performing her dancing routine, during which we are shown yet another level of fantasy in which Baby Doll and her compatriots are super-women, capable of all kinds of superhuman abilities in fights, and they are engaged in various "missions" in fantasy or science fiction themed environments, ranging from the trenches of World War I manned by zombie creatures with advanced weapons, to a traditional castle that needs to be stormed that also serves as the home of a fire breathing dragon and, finally, futuristic environments set on other worlds. During these sequences, they take their orders from an overseer (Scott Glenn) who provides them clues that relate to their missions in the nightclub world.
Without a doubt, Zack Snyder and his team have managed to assemble a visually arresting film with densely detailed environments that are very well realized. All the films action sequences are set in synthetic worlds that are full of slick, fantastical elements that are indeed gorgeous to look at. The production design team and visual effects artists have gone the extra mile to make Sucker Punch a very good looking production. What is missing, however, is anything above the thinnest of screenplays that is provided as the skeleton to hang the visuals on. Sucker Punch is flat and lifeless, practically boring after a time, because beyond the pretty pictures, there is very little to the story.
One of the film's biggest failings is to enshroud the story in two levels of fantasy, especially the second level that kicks in every time Baby Doll is supposed to be performing her dance routines and we are treated to the action sequences. Because these are complete fantasy, detached from the surrounding narrative, and feature the female characters as indestructible super heroes, with reflexes and skills to rival Superman, we have no emotional investment in these sequences. We don't feel any concern or suspense as to the outcome, because there are no real stakes to them; they are good looking showpieces and that is it, with no real connection to the film at large. When all your characters are indestructible, and you know that everything on the screen is just a fantasy of one of the characters, how can you expect the audience to be invested in what is happening on the screen?
It doesn't help that, in the film's larger story, it suffers from practically no real character development to any of the leads. There are a significant number of attractive, young female actresses in the various main roles, but the people they are supposed to be embodying are almost completely without any investment by the screenplay other than to have them simply move through the motions of the story events. We learn practically nothing about any of them, save for some minor surface detail, so we are not interested or involved in what happens to any of them as the film progresses, for the most part. As it reaches its climax, there is a twinge of empathy for one of the characters, but the emotional payoff is still nowhere what it could be if there was any more depth to these characters than what was necessary to just move the plot forward.
Since there is very little to the characters, the actors do the best they can, but it is mostly for naught. Oscar Issacs, as the captor, Blue, manages to deliver up some over-the-top scenery chewing as the villain, but Cornish and her cohorts could be realized by just about any actress as presented in Sucker Punch, that is how little the film is dependent on most of its characters. The stars of this film are the visuals, not actors.
Sucker Punch does not bode well for Zack Snyder's ability to craft a film from scratch with any degree of story or character beyond the bare minimum needed for him to craft the intricate images that he has obviously decided to focus on in this film. Sucker Punch is impressive to look at, but there is almost absolutely nothing more to it beneath the glossy sheen of its fancy exterior.