On paper, the Sucker Punch DVD has all the makings a good film; a group of smoking girls who fight for survival, some amazing special effects and pearls of wisdom dropped like candy dust. However, you make it at least half way through the movie and because of the fantastical nature of it you lose touch with reality and start to expect everything to go well. Luckily, it’s a feeling that passes, making it much more engaging in the final quarter as things start to get more tense.
Sucker Punch is set in a psychiatric institute, which is to become the home of new inmate Babydoll (Emily Browning) who is being incarcerated by her sexually abusive step-father after she accidentally killed her sister trying to save her from him. Inside Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, Babydoll’s imagination runs wild with giant samurai fighters and killer robots, taking her hot inmates with her for the battle of the adventures. However, the unreality of the dancing girls show that she retreats to catches up with them and Babydoll must come up with an escape plan.
Scott Glenn’s Wise Man mentor is a good additions to the film, spinning out his messages of fight or give in to the flow of destruction with prophetic charm. Bad guy anger is sincerely played by Oscar Isaac as Blue Jones, an orderly at the asylum that takes on the form of the boss of the dancing girls in Babydoll’s fantasy world. The girls themselves are everything that they aught to be, delivering the nature of exploitation perfectly, with Jamie Chung as Amber, Vanessa Hudgens as Blondie, Jena Malone as Rocket, and Abbie Cornish as Rocket’s sister, Sweet Pea.
The fight scenes are literally amazing visually, with aspects of Sin City cinematography mixing with cutting edge special effects, pitting the group against killer dragons and zombie Nazis. The DVD also comes with a few animated features bolted onto it, along with a feature on the music behind Sucker Punch, which is pretty slick.
Directed by Zack Snyder, you get a sense of the magnitude of his previous work, 300, in the imaginary world that Babydoll retreats into to make it through the nightmare of her sisters death and the injustice of Lennox House.
Though there is definitely a sense of being too detached from reality to make you care about what is happening in the film to begin with, the plot soon develops enough of a slice of real life to get your attention back for the closing scenes of Sucker Punch. When you wrap your head around the fantasy within a fantasy of the film you start to see that the film is pretty sad at heart, but the escape of the adventures is a fun ride to follow when surrounded by darkness. In that respect, it’s a little like The Life of Pi.
Sucker Punch DVD review: 3.8/5
