Sucker Punch

Director: Zack Snyder

After making a name for himself in recent years as a director of big budget film adaptations of comic books (“300”, “Watchmen”) and remakes (“Dawn of the Dead”) Warner Bros. has given Zack Snyder the freedom to reign free on his latest project. Co-writing, producing and directing “Sucker Punch” Snyder has created a film which leaves the viewer wondering if they have just witnessed a thing of genius or a nonsensical collection of snippets compacted into 109 minutes.

 “Sucker Punch” takes place in 1955 and focuses on a 20-year-old girl, Babydoll (Emily Browning) who is institutionalized by her evil stepfather as she attempts to protect herself and her sister from him while they are grieving the death of their mother. Inside the institution, which uses the controversial practice of lobotomy, Babydoll learns to slip into a fantasy world in which herself and some of her fellow patients are brothel workers attempting to find a way to escape. But in order to escape they must first collect some essential items, each of which must be stolen. Working with Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Rocket (Jena Malone) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Babydoll uses dance to distract the various clinic workers while the items are collected. While dancing Babydoll fantasizes on a second level, envisioning herself and her fellow heroines as being placed in precarious positions in which they need to fight an assortment of far-fetched enemies including mechanical samurais, dragons and gas-powered Nazis in order to gain the items.

Snyder himself obviously has a very vivid imagination which comes out strongly in this film but herein lays the problem. Undoubtedly visually brilliant with excess use of special effects, this film attempts to cram in too many disjointed ideas, moving the attention away from the film’s more serious central issue of patient abuse in institutions in the years following the World War II. 

Now showing  in all three countries.