"Sucker Punch" tries to hit you with its best shot.

Rating: 6/10 (25 March 2011)

Baby Doll, Sweet Pea, Amber, Blondie and Rocket all must band together to fight zombies, giant samurais, dragons and robots to find five objects in order to escape the mental institute. That must have been as much information Zack Snyder (director of "300" and "Watchmen") was able to fit on his cocktail napkin as he drafted the screen play for "Sucker Punch." Snyder's original concept could be either an expansive epic tale with lots of eye candy for the fan boys or the plot to a late night Cinemax adult film. Take out the action scenes then add in a few "adult situations" and the story is basically the same.
We start our journey with the main focus of the five heroines, Baby Doll (played by Emily Browning). She narrates the opening scene telling us that we all have guardian angels watching over us. She then offers some psychobabble about how sometimes the bad things can also lead to good things.
In an opening sequence with very little dialogue, we see her mother die then there is a terrible accident that forces her evil stepfather to commit Baby Doll to an insane asylum. Once in the Asylum Baby Doll has five days before she is given a frontal lobe lobotomy.
From this point forward, the viewer should really shut his or her mind off and enjoy the ride. Nothing more is explained on how things work or even why they work in Snyder's world. This is a pure gratification film from the aesthetic viewpoint.
Baby Doll immediately learns how to use a cerebral performance to escape the asylum even if it is only in her mind. But where would a 20-year-old orphan escape to if she had the choice? Of course, she would choose to escape to a burlesque house. Yep, that's right, a place worse than the asylum. Now she has to run away from a sleazy pimp (played by Oscar Isaac) and his filthy clientele. Also, in this alternate world, she will also choose to wear scanty lingerie (hey, I'm on board with it).
Baby Doll soon finds that she can be a persuasive exotic dancer. While dancing she holds her viewers captive so that she can visit alternative realities. In her first trip she meets up with a wise sage (played by Scott Glenn) who gives her instructions on how to escape from her asylum/ burlesque house. He gives her a samurai sword and a fully loaded hand gun. Similar to the plot of many Xbox video games, she is given a task to do and each level becomes progressively harder. Luckily she bands together with four other girls who don't like wearing a lot of clothes either.
The plan is simple: Baby Doll dances to distract her captors while the four girls gather their needed objects to escape. Her dancing is so hypnotic that we, the audience, aren't even allowed to see her dance. Instead we see several extremely articulate action scenes all held together by a soundtrack with cover songs from The Beatles, The Pixies and Jefferson Airplane. It's a fair trade.
Should you see this movie? Only if you like action, fantasy, and young girls dressed in various seductive costumes (you know who you are).
The bulk of the film is an action fantasy that would make perfect sense to die-hard gamers, steam punkers, sci-fi geeks, and almost any dude under the age of 25. Right before the credits roll, we hear the message of why we were watching this orgy of guns, swords and cleavage for the last hour and a half. With that, Snyder mucks up a perfectly good visually amplified film by trying to add a deep meaning to it. I did feel sucker punched because of that effort.