Sucker Punch (2011) Movie Review

Sucker Punch is Snyder's barely legal wet dream. It's a film with the vision of a teen boy excited by the Victoria's Secret catalog and confused by his burgeoning sexuality. I would take this even farther but there's still a lot to get to.

Set during the 1950s, Sucker Punch centers on a girl we'll come to know as Babydoll (Emily Browning) following the accidental death of her younger sister whom she was trying to save from their step father's sexual advances. In an attempt to hide what really happened, Babydoll's step father commits her to a mental hospital and pays off an orderly (Oscar Isaac) to expedite a lobotomy. But before that can happen, she slips in and out of one imagined reality into the next where she and her new found friends attempt to escape the confines of the institution holding them captive.


This Shutter Island scenario is only the start as reality gives way to layered imagination. We're not talking all out Inception here, but what we first see as a mental hospital gives way to a '50s nightclub and Babydoll is no longer a patient, but one of several lingerie-clad hookers dancing for dollars.

Joining Babydoll are Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish). Equipped with names you'd give a child if you wanted their career paths to end in the arms of Ron Jeremy, this fist of softcore fury teams up to break out.

With the story before you, understand the set up is by no means the problem with this film. Described by Snyder as "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns," it's actually the seed for a potentially fun story. It's just too bad this seed grows into a weed. Lacking in any kind of valuable sustenance all you want to do is kill it.

The majority of the film's dialogue, though, belongs to Carla Gugino as the hospital's head psychologist and Oscar Isaac as not only a hospital orderly in the real world, but the equivalent of a pimp in the imagined one. Then there's Scott Glenn (The Right Stuff) as he channels David Carradine's Kill Bill persona as Babydoll's dreamworld guide known only as Wise Man. Glenn is given the distinguishable duty of delivering such clever battle cries as, "Don't ever write a check with your mouth you can't cash with your ass