Sucker Punch (Warner)
There is no doubt that Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch, the director’s first original script, is a mess of movie. Even the term “original” is a questionable description, as the wide range of influences define the film as much as his own pop sensibilities. Yet Sucker Punch was so critically derided that I think it’s been dismissed without really acknowledging the mad mix of inspirations or Snyder’s own blinkered passion for the project, clearly something that, for reasons he may not be able to articulate, he poured his creative energies into.
The vague mid-20th Century setting with a 19th century Gothic attitude and 1990s music-video stylings drops Baby Doll (Emily Browning) into a private sanitarium that looks like something out of the Batman movies. But before we have a chance to ruminate on this post-Dickens orphanage horror we are plunged into her fantasy of the place as a bordello prison fronted by a gangster (the head orderly, with a pencil mustache and zoot suit) in the flesh trade, with the Cuckoo’s Nest of pretty young inmates (Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung) now dancers in the show, which is just part of the club’s entertainment. (The extended version on Blu-ray features an elaborate musical number that puts their chorus girl moves on display.)
But that’s just the first step down the rabbit hole of escapist fantasy. Under the hypnotic sways of Baby Doll’s magic moves, the girls are refashioned as jailbait stripper fantasies (all with exposed navels and a flash of thigh) and arm themselves with heavy metal artillery to take on one anachronistic video game scenario after another: a samurai rite of passage, a World War II mission against zombie Nazis, a siege on a castle of Orc-like beasts and dragons, a sci-fi odyssey against robot terrorists on a moon of Saturn. Because nothing says female empowerment better than little babydoll outfits and really big guns.
Read More “Suckered? Why Zach Snyder’s “Sucker Punch” deserves reconsideration”