Fanaticalaboutfilms Review: Sucker Punch

Rating: 5/10 (8 April 2011)

Sucker Punch intrigued me before its release due to the seemingly random storyline and what looked like impressive graphics. So I sat down to watch it wondering whether I was going to enjoy the story it has to tell or be confused by it. Unfortunately it was the latter. Now I try and find both positives and negatives in everything I review but graphics aside (which were very enjoyable to watch and engaging) I struggled to for Sucker Punch.
Sucker Punch revolves around Baby Doll (Emily Browning) who is imprisoned in a mental asylum by her wicked and abusive stepfather so that he can lay claim to an inheritance meant for her and her sister. Whilst in the asylum she retreats to a fantasy world of a brother and then further again (Inception-esque) through the medium of dance while her attractive and scantily clad new found friends assist her in her quest to break out of the asylum/brothel and gain freedom. Still with me? Good.
It is quite obvious that this movie comes from the same director (Zach Snyder) that brought us 300 as the return of the super slo-mo fight scenes have arrived in abundance as they did in 300. I have to say they work well in the action scenes in the fantasy world but are also used when no action is taking place... the film could cut 10 minutes from its 110 by just running those parts at normal speed with no real loss.
Now I'm not sure whether I just completely missed the point of this movie or not but I don't want to have to watch it for a second time to find out. Usually I would warn of spoilers but there can't really be any when there is no plot in the first place and the scenes are so random and disjointed that nothing really makes sense. I got the logic behind the desperation of Baby Doll needing to escape her reality as a way of coping but come on she can only do this through dance? And when she is dancing this puts every man in the real world into some sort of a trance? So on the positive side then the graphics do drag this movie upwards in the ratings with the overall CGI action being very impressive covering a plethora of locations and situations. Even so the graphics did not really add much to the story. Don't get me wrong they were great and I enjoyed the scenes but I got the feeling that Snyder just put them in because he could when he should have perhaps been concentrating slightly more on developing the characters and making us care about them.
Finally my last gripe with this movie is that you never think that the girls are in any danger during the fight scenes and so even if you did end up caring whether they die of not, they don't look like they are ever going to making the slo-mo bullets and swords kind of pointless.
Despite impressing with graphics, the plot and acting are poor, you never invest in the characters well-being and the graphics seem to be surplus to the movie anyway. If the graphics were the punch then the rest of the movie was definitely the suck.
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