The new CGI-packed action flick “Sucker Punch” mixes action influences from “Kill Bill,” dream-within-a-dream concepts from “Inception,” skanky costumes from Japanese Manga fantasies and the sick element of violence against women from any number of movies. All of these borrowed themes make up one totally unoriginal, disappointing movie from director Zack Snyder who gave us the epic, if not overhyped movie “300.”
That’s not to say Snyder lacks any imagination; he has oodles of it. But the imagination that made “300” today’s cult hit is lost in “Sucker Punch” underneath an eye-sore of CGI effects and a totally incoherent, ineffective plot.
The plot of the movie is probably this film’s biggest problem, in that nothing ever feels like it has a place in driving the story.
Set in 1955, the movie centers on the 20-year-old beauty “Baby Doll” ­— a doe-eyed, docile blonde Emily Browning — after the tragic death of her mother. Her evil, creepy and incestuous stepfather tries to molest her and her sister. Baby Doll tries to shoot him in their defense, but instead accidentally kills her sister.
Snyder tries to be artistic in the scenes, showing the slow motion of a button being ripped off Baby Doll’s blouse by her father. But what exactly does the button symbolize? And why is the audience forced to agonizingly watch the button fall to the ground?
The evil stepfather institutionalizes Baby Doll, where she quickly learns she is going to receive a lobotomy in a few days.
Fast forward and suddenly Baby Doll is working in a brothel. Much like “Inception,” the audience can’t tell if this is just a dream or not. But who cares? Snyder spends little time exploring if it is in fact a dream or if he really just wanted an excuse to put a ton of barely-of-age girls on the screen to dance in burlesque costumes.
Enter in yet another dream when Baby Doll and her brothel friends use their “dream world,” which is filled with World War I zombies, dragons and probably some Spartans along the way, to escape their reality of sexual exploitation and violence —  a theme the director capitalizes on, even though he never shows it. The gothic, dark action fantasy sounded like a relatively awesome girl-powered action film. The trailers for “Sucker Punch” portray it as a female-friendly movie, but in reality it is the antithesis of that. Only in Baby Doll’s dream world does she, or any of the other women, ever escape the terror they face by the men in the real world, and nothing is ever resolved.
In the end, this movie is dull, confusing and kind of offensive. Women hoping to finally find a female-empowering action flick would be better off watching “Catwoman,” even if only for a good laugh.
[email protected]