Ambitious, but incredibly flawed and messy

Rating: 3/10 (18 January 2020)

I hesitate to say that Sucker Punch is a terrible film ... but man does it feel like one.
Sucker Punch is the rare non-adaption from director/writer Zack Snyder that showcases his visionary talent while also highlighting all of his worst habits.
Pretty film with creative action scenes? Yes!
Bad plot, character development, pacing, etc? Yes!
Switch out Snyder for a better director and Sucker Punch might have been a radical vision of trauma, escapism and gender roles on par with Pan's Labyrinth - a film that tackles similar themes but is done far better in almost every single way, and one I feel Snyder was heavily inspired by. I admire Snyder's ambitions a lot, I just question the execution.
For the record I'm only talking of the theatrical cut, not the extended cut or the recently announced "Snyder Cut."
Sucker Punch is the 1960s tale of Babydoll (Emily Browning), a young lady who is put into an insane asylum by her evil stepfather after she gets blamed for the death of her sister. The father pays an orderly named Blue (Oscar Isaac) to forge documents to get her lobotomized at the "orders" of the chief psychiatrist (Carla Gugino) as she's the sole witness to her sister's death at his hands, as well as the sole beneficiary of her recently deceased mother's will (it's the 1960's, lobotomizing young girls was a lot easier back then). When this is about to happen Babydoll starts to fantasize that she's in a brothel run by Blue and has several other of the asylum members in the dream as sex slave dancers (Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung) and plans to escape her captivity. So they devise a plan to steal items to help them escape, as Babydoll uses her mesmerizing dance skills to distract people ... which is interpreted on screen as another fantasy which involves stuff like dragons, steampunk nazi zombies, gigantic magic samurai armor creatures ... I need a drink.
Okay, so the first thing that stands out about this film is that while I watched it is I had literally zero investment in the fantasy plots - you know, the entire selling point of the film and the reason a studio put money into it. We know that in reality Babydoll is a second away from getting a lobotomy, so what's the interest in seeing the last dream of someone who's about to suffer a cruel fate? Heck the reality part lasts all of 10 minutes at most, with the vast majority of the runtime spent on a hallucination. The dream story itself might have worked okay without the framing narrative, but it's too many layers that don't matter.
This lack of weight to the, admittedly, wonderfully choreographed action setpieces does bring the whole of the film down. All the fantasies relate in some way to the theft of the items that Babydoll and company will need to "escape" but their own logic fails. For example: stealing magic crystals from a dragon in an orc-filled castle equates to pick pocketing a lighter. We know that whatever happens against the dragon means nothing and affects nothing, it's merely an overlong romanticized visual of a mundane act. Did Snyder just come up with a series of disconnected action scenes that he had to somehow build a story around? I have no idea, but he did somehow make steampunk nazi zombies fighting a giant mech and 5 young girls dressed more to titillate than protect somehow be boring.
Sucker Punch is also very messy with its message. A lot has been written about the way this film treats its female stars; it's either a sexist tale of men oppressing women while being a faux-feminist action-fest meant for horny teenage boys, or a story of female empowerment against the male forces that hold them down. Oh, and the film features girls kicking ass in a fantasy when in reality they are being abused over and over again (rape, sexual assault, murder, etc). Yay for imaginary empowerment?
I honestly don't know how to deal with Sucker Punch's dismal delivery of themes. Does Sucker Punch use sexist images to subvert those very same sexist images? Can a film that checks all the boxes of being sexist not be sexist because it was being sexist on purpose to show how sexist the world is? All I know is Snyder doesn't have the best reputation in regards to how he features female characters, and Sucker Punch does sort of fit that mold.
With all this messy, boring, and borderline offensive material I can still see how some people have come to love Sucker Punch. The "attempt" at delivering a message is noble - albeit heavily flawed. The film does feature Snyder's trademark ability to direct a stylish action scene like few can; these are scenes that are completely unique and creatively done by a man who built a career off his eye for action. The concept itself is interesting even if it borrows from far superior sources. Sucker Punch does have some good things in it, they are just buried under a lot of mess.
There was clearly passion put into Sucker Punch; passion that doesn't always end in great results. It seems all involved were heavily invested in the project and wanted it to succeed; it's failure made more tragic for those who didn't realize the flaws in its design. Sucker Punch is a boring, messy, convoluted, and at times unpleasant piece of cinema with failed aspirations to be something so much more. Had Snyder not fallen yet again into the traps of his works he might have come up with a modern masterpiece of surreal images conveying a deeper, disturbing look at society. Sucker Punch is the cinematic equal of going to a fine art gallery that reeks of rotting food, has a leaky roof, and you have to wade through sewage on the way out.
With better direction and a more refined vision Sucker Punch could have been miraculous. As it stands it's nothing more than a failed attempt at auteur cinema from a director that's own bad habits got in his way.