I've only seen two of Zack Snyder's past directorial efforts, but I can say that I did enjoy them very much. And I'm surely not the only one, as Warner Bros. recently pegged him to helm their upcoming relaunch of the Superman film franchise. But all the affection I may have for his remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead and his adaptation of Watchmen, I have about as much sheer hatred for his newest movie, Sucker Punch. I'm utterly flabbergasted as just how awful Sucker Punch is. It's a movie where not only does style drastically outweigh substance, but the style isn't that great to begin with. But let's get this review over with so I can hurry up and pretend I've never seen the movie.
Sucker Punch follows a young woman nicknamed "Baby Doll" (Emily Browning), whose abusive stepfather killed her mother in an attempt to claim her fortune. But he's incensed to discover that he's been left out of the will. In a rage, he attacks Baby Doll and her sister, a scuffle that ends with Baby Doll accidentally shooting and killing her sister. The stepfather has Baby Doll institutionalized to make sure she never speaks out about what he's done, going as far as to bribe an orderly into forging documents to have her lobotomized.
In the four days it will take for the surgeon to arrive and perform the lobotomy, Baby Doll retreats into a fantasy world to escape her hellish reality. In this fantasy world, Baby Doll is an orphaned dancer who's been sold to a mob-controlled burlesque club that makes most of its money through drugs and prostitution. Baby Doll is quickly befriended by some of the club's other dancers, in particular Rocket (Jena Malone) and her older sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung), but she makes it no secret that she'd rather be anywhere else on the face of the planet.
When she herself has to dance, Baby Doll can't bring herself to even move. But when her dance instructor (Carla Gugino) tells her that it's a matter of life or death, she doesn't have much of a choice. So as she dances, she imagines herself and her newfound friends in battle, fighting giant gun-toting samurais, the German army's steam-powered reanimated corpses during World War I, and things even crazier than that. Using these fantasies to guide her, she becomes the best dancer in the club.
In her over-the-top fantasies, Baby Doll meets a wise old man (Scott Glenn), who tells her that freedom will be hers if she can collect a series of items: a map, a lighter, a knife, a key, and a final item that will make itself known when the time is right. And if there's an opportunaty for her to escape, she's damn well going to try. Her plan: distract all the men in the club with her dance skills while Rocket, Sweet Pea, Blondie, and Amber gather the items for her. They'll have to be quick about it, as the club's sleazy owner (Oscar Isaac) has arranged for Baby Doll's virginity to be sold to someone calling himself "the high roller" in four days.
Sucker Punch is a weird entry into the realm of bad movies. It's painfully obvious that it had the potential to be a great, truly unique experience. You can tell from the first frame of the movie that it could have been an awesome adventure. But the movie is bogged down by an uneven pace, poor storytelling caused by a weak narrative, forgettable acting, and a feeling of overall stupidity that plagues the whole movie. It had so much potential for excellence, yet the only thing Sucker Punch accomplishes is pushing one's patience to the breaking point. If you can make it all the way through to the end of the closing credits without growing angry or frustrated at Sucker Punch's idiocy, then you are a far stronger person than I.
Zack Snyder broke into the industry with his Dawn of the Dead remake, and the three movies he directed after that — 300, Watchmen, and the animated Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole — were adaptations of comic books and children's literature. Sucker Punch marks his first attempt at making an original movie, and from a directorial standpoint, the results were mixed.
Unfortunately, he doesn't bring much to the table outside of some slick visuals. And even then, Snyder goes overboard with them. Nothing about the movie ever feels real, never once convincing the viewer that they're looking at anything more than computer-generated special effects. You can't take any of this nonsense seriously if it doesn't try to make itself believable. In something like Sin City, you know you're seeing a ton of CGI, but the substance behind the style was strong enough to make it effective. But Snyder's efforts to make some kind of groundbreaking, thought-provoking piece of cinema are for naught, because not one second of it works. He gets incredibly close with the prologue, which I'll admit I thought was very captivating. It's actually a very beautifully-done sequence that belies just how bad the rest of the movie is. But the rest of the movie is so bad that it makes me resent the things I actually liked.
Snyder doesn't help things by crafting the movie in such a way that it very quickly wears out its welcome. Scenes that have little to no point go on for way too long, and some scenes make their point and still keep going anyway. The movie itself doesn't seem to know when to stop, as we get a pretentious monologue after the movie has already faded to black. There's no need for this movie to be two hours long, as there's a ton of stuff here and there that could have been trimmed or shortened. What frightens me is that I've heard there were quite a few scenes and some whole subplots cut from the movie, which may be restored into a "director's cut" for the DVD and Blu-ray release in a few months. I dread the idea of Sucker Punch being any longer, but here's hoping that reintroducing these scenes will help the movie flow better, because the version playing theatrically right now is a complete mess.
A lot of the reason it's that way is not only because of Snyder's direction, but the lackluster script as well. Written by Snyder and Steve Shibuya, the script is, quite frankly, lacking in a lot of departments. The story is not only worthless but told badly to boot, the dialogue is banal, and the characters are forgettable. That whole "dream within a dream" aspect made the movie feel uneven, as if it kept moving in all kinds of different directions without knowing where it wanted to go. I felt like I was watching Inception and Girl Interrupted at the same time after having taken twice my body weight in LSD. Precious little of it makes any sense even after you factor in the "dream within a dream" thing. Add in that there's only one, maybe two likable characters in the entire movie, and you end up with a script that translates into a movie that's more irritating than provocative.
Last but not least is the cast, who are about as far from memorable as you can get. Despite being the star, Emily Browning is flat and uninspiring. She's just kinda there, which is exactly the opposite of what I felt they were going for with the character. I thought the rest of the cast was too forgettable to even mention, with a few exceptions. One is Abbie Cornish, whose performance I just plain didn't like. Not only is her character one of the hardest to like, but Cornish's performance is one of the worst. But at least she made an impression, which is more than I can say for the rest of the cast. I will say, though, that I enjoyed what Jena Malone and Oscar Isaac brought to the table. Their performances are buried beneath a mountain of mediocrity, but they at least manage to contribute a little something good.
When I walked out of the theater after seeing Sucker Punch yesterday, I was actually angered by how bad it was. But after spending a day reflecting on it, I'm actually more disappointed than anything else. I wanted Sucker Punch to be a kick-ass ride, but it totally let me down. It fails as an action movie, it fails as a psychological drama, and it fails as a piece of female empowerment. If anything, the movie's title is fitting. I went in expecting a good movie and totally got sucker punched.
Final Rating: *½
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