Only worth its weight in references.

Rating: 3/10 (1 April 2011)

I would only recommend this movie to my friends that play Warhammer 40K because the only kick I got out of the movie was the references to units in the "dreams." I can sum up everything good about this movie in two points:
1. It had stunning visuals (though ill-used motifs). 2. It had the best original soundtrack of any movie I've seen (better than even Aronofsky's The Fountain).
The movie's opening was almost great being very reminiscent of the movie Up's opening that I could watch enough times to constitute the entire movie's screen time. However, the opening to Suckerpunch was squandered by a bad voice over and unnecessary dialogue that broke the mood very soon into the film. Throughout the rest of the movie, this becomes a recurring theme incarnate in useless screen time and an equally ruined ending to movie (a movie that should have ended two minutes and forty seconds earlier, but another bad voice over and pointless dialogue detracted from what would have been a lasting impression on the audience and me.
Now that we have cleared away the beginning and the end of the movie, we can look at all that's in between. The main character was very well written:
1. She was portrayed as a blank slate, but rather than having the other characters and her environment reflect onto her, she paints her own canvas as the movie goes on allowing the audience to grow with the character and share empathy. 2. She doesn't ruin the mood with poor dialogue too often.
On the other hand, she had many flaws that could have been left out to create a more enjoyable experience:
1. Her entire purpose in the movie seemed very much visual and much less mental in that much of her screen time was spent running and gunning against an endless stream of enemies. 2. Rather than contributing to the scenarios she is placed in, she goes with the flow and merges in with the other characters she is paired with giving her no room to stand out. 3. She is never alone enough for the audience to really grow into her without having to push another character out of the way.
Considering she's the protagonist, it's a bit unnerving to see her character have more flaws than strengths. I really did find myself rooting less for her, and more for the group she was in. The characters she attempts to escape with don't really become part of her, but rather conform to her contributing nothing, detracting from nothing, and being overall just filler.
The dreams in the movie themselves are poorly used and come across as merely an excuse to flash more military hardware in your face. This is where the movie becomes very much like the worst first person shooter released this year: Call of Duty: Black Ops. Much screen time is pointless firefights between Warhammer 40K factions and scantily clad teenagers wielding L/SMG's that does not advance the plot or develop the characters any, rather, all the people in this movie are two-dimensional without personality that drew no emotion from me with their deaths. Ask yourself, "Why do the characters in the movie cry when their friends die and I don't shed a tear?" The answer is clear: Those characters knew more about each other than we did, they were under greater stress than we were, they had greater ambitions than any of us in that theater, and they felt more emotions than we could looking at the screen in front of us. All of this is because the movie does not do a good job of replicating the character's emotions, we do not connect to the people in the film, and we know very little about almost all of them.
Plot and character wise, there is really nothing good about this movie at all. I suggest you watch a slideshow of some of the more stunning screenshots with the amazing soundtrack played over it, then you will get the optimum experience this movie has to offer, because that's all it is: a pretty picture and good music. My final statement: I watched it so you don't have to.