Snyder sucker punches the audience
Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is committed to a mental asylum by her sexually abusive step-father after he kills Baby Doll's younger sister and blames it on her. Baby Doll is to suffer a lobotomy, and retreats into an alternative reality as a coping strategy. In there, she envisions a plan which will help her, and four other girls, escape from the mental facility.
When I first saw the trailer for Sucker Punch, I was enamored by it. The film instantly became one of my most anticipated of 2011. After all that time, i finally got to watch it, and suffice to say, I am rather disappointed by it.
As far as the performances go, there was nothing really worth praising. Carla Gugino really hammed it up, while putting on a bad accent to boot, and Jon Hamm barely appeared, leaving me unable to actually judge his performance. Oscar Issac played the horribly unlikable and typically by the numbers villain. Speaking of the characters, I never once felt connected to any of them or really cared about whether the girls escaped or not. In fact, I felt more emotion for the mother dragon when she saw the dead baby dragon than I did about any of the girls.
Being a Zack Snyder film, you're right to assume that he employs the use of slow motion. He integrates it well with the action sequences which when put together, manages to be utterly thrilling, before eventually becoming repetitive. The soundtrack is a great selection of songs which work well within the scenes they are used in.
The sudden change between worlds is used as a coping mechanism for Baby Doll, but I found it a bit confusing. I wasn't confused about which world was which, but I was confused as to what was happening in the mental asylum as Baby Doll's fantasies about the brothel and the other world took hold. The dialogue was pretty bad, with every word escaping The Wise Man's mouth being cliched.
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| Nothing says intimidating like a rabbit faced robot |
Snyder does bring quite a few different and interesting ideas to the table, like employing steampunk nazis who bleed steam or making the quest for the kitchen knife a race against time to stop a bomb on a train from exploding. With that said, each journey to get each item feels like a level in a video game. The best thing about this film is Snyder's visual style, making this film feel more like a stylish extravigansa as the near-breathtaking visuals showcased where Snyder's strengths lie (hint: it isn't in writing).
When Baby Doll is told about the items she'll need to get, she's also told of a fifth item which will be "a deep sacrifice and a perfect victory". I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I will say the sacrifice is not the slightest bit deep, nor is the victory (if you can call it that) perfect at all. The film's ending was pretty unsatisfying, especially due to the fact that Baby Doll's scumbag step-father gets away with what he did. I also found the ending to be quite weird.
Sucker Punch felt like a string of notes about different films that Snyder had clobbered together, and it really shows. One of the more disappointing films i've seen this year, and it leaves me doubting how 2013's Man of Steel will turn out.
Comments
I just don't think Snyder can write that well (for a filmmaker I suppose - he's probably way better than your average citizen).
My favorite Snyder flicks are Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead, and he didn't write either of those. I don't think he wrote/is writing Man of Steel either, so I think we're safe.
Enjoyed your review!
@Ruth take your time, you're not missing out on much
@Robert Well that gives me hope for Man of Steel, and I loved Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead
@The Chad Reviews I can see how it was like Inception, in the whole dream within a dream thing, but the intelligent writing and narrative were vacant
@Matt Stewart well you're not missing out on much