A scene from 'Sucker Punch'. Courtesy Warner Bros.
I would say that the characters in Zack Snyder’s latest film, Sucker Punch, could never exist in any plane of reality because of how one dimensional they are. Thankfully, the opening and closing 10 minutes of the film are the only parts that even take place in the real world, meaning I don’t have to feel self-conscious about using such a critical cliche. Does that mean that Sucker Punch is actually a good movie because of this? Hell no, but the more I think about it the more interesting a failure I think it is. There is a good film trying to get out of Sucker Punch, but Zack Snyder is just the wrong person to bring something like this to the screen.
I have a feeling that I am going to be slightly more charitable than most of my critical brethren when it comes to talking about Sucker Punch. In truth, the film does have a few things going for it. The film attempts a challenging plot structure despite not being able to pull it off or explain anything. The cast members fit their roles of… um… uh…
The soundtrack is filled with great songs that are unfortunately not sung by the original artists but instead by actors from the film who don’t even sing them on camera. (But if they used these awesome songs, the thought was there, right?) The film is filled with allusions to classic musicals from the 1930s Busby Berkely films to Moulin Rouge despite only being a musical in so far as it attempts to ape the structure of one amid a bunch of heavy handed symbolism within what amounts to little more than Inception for dummies. It has the interesting but obvious notion of correlating action sequences to eroticism, but it explores the action way more than the vastly more interesting subtext.
I will be kind to Sucker Punch in just a moment. I swear it. I do have one nice thing to say about the film, but I will leave it until the end because to anyone reading this review what I say will be painfully obvious. I am sure Zack Snyder can really appreciate that I leave the most obvious points until the end of the review.
