Sucker Punch to the Gut

Rating: 9/10 (12 September 2012)

"Sucker Punch" (2011) is a schizophrenic masterpiece. The masterminds of Sucker Punch, director Zack Snyder and writers Zack Snyder and Seve Shibuya, create a hyper-reality of a 20 year-old girl who is placed in a mental institution by her stepfather. Babydoll enters Lennox Hopsital for the Mentally Insane knowing she needs to find a way to escape in order to turn her stepfather into the authorities for her sister's death. In her alternate reality, she meets an Old Wise Man whom strategically explains how to escape the institution before she is given a lobotomy, "a surgical incision to the frontal lobe of the brain that severs one or more nerve tracts."
Set in the 1960s, this action/fantasy/adventure film grabs the viewer's attention instantly. As Babydoll enters her alternate reality, her coping mechanism to escape realism, the film aesthetically transforms Babydoll, a blonde, blue-eyed female, into a sexy animated dance character. Babydoll's Barbie stature uses her curves to distract the male administrators in the institution to gather five items that would be an integral entity to escape Lennox House for the Mentally Insane. Babydoll is able to find the confidence to put herself in font of ogling men from her envisioned dance instructor, Dr. Gorski.
Babydoll's quest risks more than her proved sanity of her sister's death. She confides in four other girls to aide in her distraction, and it's bewitching to know that in her attempt, lives are risked and tears are shedded for Babydoll's sacrifice.
The term sucker punch is relative; the meaning is different to everyone. However, Snyder's "Sucker Punch" is more expressive, elusive, and entertaining than most. Babydoll is being sucker punched first by her stepfather for covering his actions, and second by the institution for bribing Babydoll's stepfather to forge his signature to secure Babydoll's memory loss. As the audience sees Babydoll's transcendence into her alternate reality, the audience expects Babydoll to pull through. Just when the viewer's are lead into one direction believing this hyper-reality is her reality, a twist is in place when Snyder sneaks upon his audience and gives them a sucker punch into the transcendence of reality. The audience is then informed of Babydoll's sacrifice.
"Sucker Punch" failed in comparison to "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules" at the box office. "Sucker Punch" brought in $19.1 million while "Rodrick Rules" begged in $22.1. "Sucker Punch" was Snyder's worst live- action review. In part, by meshing more than one genre, action/fantasy/adventure along with drama, mental health, and gaming into one film single handedly is easy to misinterpret. The one thing that Snyder is able to convey through symbolism is the mental health status of schizophrenia.