Fascinating, Frustrating, and Hard to Shake

Rating: 7/10 (11 April 2011)

Several days after viewing it, I have come to the conclusion that I like "Sucker Punch." I *think* I like it, anyway. At the very least, I have been unable to shake its alternatively bleak, exhilarating, and brazenly energized imagery from my frontal lobe. Coming from director Zack Snyder (who co-wrote the original script with Steve Shibuya), the notion of calling this film a vanity project is redundant, as Snyder is the whiz kid who gave us Green-Screened visual feasts like "300" and "Watchmen" (graphic-novel adaptations that, in the case of the latter, came very close to perfection) -- films that gorged themselves on a unique kind of visual beauty. The difference between a technical auteur like Snyder and the soul-dead commercial hackwork of, say, Michael Bay is a reliable core of character and plot to push the visuals along with a sense of purpose, no matter how disparate. Which is what makes the initial machinations of "Sucker Punch" somewhat jarring -- set in an anachronistic, parallel-universe America, where Babydoll (Emily Browning) is sent away to an all-girls asylum after attacking her grotesque pervert of an uncle, she is covertly signed away (by an equally lecherous orderly) and set to receive a trans-orbital lobotomy at the end of five days, thus setting into play an imaginary world that may be her only chance of salvation. Old-world notions of psychiatry, patriarchy, and the role of women in such a repressive society is not where Snyder's interest lies, though he does create some distinctive (if not particularly well-drawn -- probably the film's biggest flaw) female ass-kickers, literally battling it out against unfathomable odds. Like Terry Gilliam's oeuvre on a dose of David Lynch mindbender, "Sucker Punch" is a largely self-indulgent work -- frequently chaotic, but mostly fascinating; Snyder's interest in cohering the various combat sequences (which run the gamut from a steampunk vision of WWII, a Medieval siege, and a futuristic train populated by android assassins) into a consistent narrative is minimal at best, instead opting for an epic, "bigger is better" mentality that reinforces the film's "against all odds" schematic (it may not be subtle or original, but the driven vision of it all makes it fly). Like Gilliam's undervalued "Tideland," "Sucker Punch" is destined for cult status -- and, unlike Tim Burton's lame interpretation of "Alice in Wonderland," is never boring.