Sucker Punch (Review)

It’s been a long time since I’ve hated a movie as much as I hate Sucker Punch. To watch it is to observe $82 million being thrown into a black hole. If you were to let a hormonal 12-year-old make a big-budget Hollywood movie, the result would look something like this. This isn’t a movie so much as it is a series of unconnected music videos interspersed within a so-called “plot.” When it begins, it is merely immature. As it goes on it becomes assaulting, mean-spirited, endless and offensive. There’s a difference between bad films and detestable ones. Empirically speaking, Sucker Punch is not the worst movie of the past several years, but it may very well be the most loathsome.

The second paragraph of my review usually contains a plot description of the movie being discussed. Well, here goes nothing. As Sucker Punch begins, we are introduced to a nameless girl played by Emily Browning. Her mother (?) has just died, and the surviving stepfather (?) decides to take the opportunity to try and molest Browning and her young sister. Browning grabs a gun in self-defense, but in the process she accidently kills her sister. This is all depicted in a single slow-motion montage set to a god-awful cover of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Are we having fun yet?

In the wake of these events, she is sent to a dark and foreboding mental institution. It is here we enter a second reality, and Browning is an orphan who is sent to a brothel. In this reality, Browning’s character has a name, and it is Baby Doll, which is no doubt empowering. After making friends with a few dancers, played by the likes of Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung, she decides to devise a plan to escape from the brothel. Meanwhile, whenever Browning dances she enters a fantasy world where she and her gals are butt-kicking warriors who must fight dragons, orc-like creatures and German robot zombie monsters from World War I. These action sequences have the excitement of watching your friend play a video game for two hours straight while bad rock music plays in the background.

Sucker Punch pretends to all about female empowerment, but it’s more about empowering females to be scantily-clad killing machines. Sucker Punch is the ultimate in hypocrisy: it preaches against the abuse of women while simultaneously objectifying them. It wants you to sympathize with these girls while lusting after them. Plus, if it were empowering at all, it wouldn’t take the sickening twist it does at the beginning of the third act. There’s nothing to feel good about here.

This film is the baby of Zack Snyder, a man who has proven time and again that he’s more than capable of making a film look good, but unfortunately for him that’s not even half the battle. It’s impossible to dispute Sucker Punch’s visual flair, but when all’s said and done there have to be reasonable means to justify the ends. Snyder’s career has long been defined by his focus on style over substance, but here he completely abandons any and all reasonable substance whatsoever. Before Sucker Punch, I was still convinced Snyder could make a great film one of these days. However, this film is so cynical, heartless and unnecessary that my respect for the man is now almost nonexistent. He’s still got a lot to learn.if this is his idea of what cinema is supposed to be.

Sucker Punch, quite frankly, is as horrible as movie experiences get. At their best, films can be mature, enlightening and downright beautiful. At their worst, films look like this. Some say it should be commended for trying something new, but sometimes this “something new” is just plain wrong. This isn’t ambition. It’s the adolescent id run amok. With Sucker Punch, Zack Snyder seemed intent on letting his imagination run wild. If this is what’s inside his brain, he needs to keep it to himself.

Rating:  (out of 4)