Sucker Punch

The first “original” film from Zach Snyder—famed for his faithful and visually dynamic graphic novel adaptations 300 and Watchmen—Sucker Punch boasts the same exaggerated stylization in its story of Baby Doll (Emily Browning), a young woman framed for murder and sent to a gothic insane asylum, where she imagines her escape through a series of videogame-like set-pieces featuring samurai fighters, Nazis, monsters, and killer robots. It's Grimm fairy tale, gothic thriller, twisted film noir, wacked-out madhouse melodrama, modern video game, and cheesecake spectacle all rolled into one—the whole framed by dime-store Freudian and Jungian psychology. Critically derided for its mash-up of styles and sensibilities, as well as its exploitative costuming of young women in sexy, revealing outfits more at home at a strip club than a purported story of female empowerment, Sucker Punch is indeed one confused—and sometimes incoherent—film. While some will surely enjoy the sheer overkill of pulp and fantasy images as Baby Doll and her young cohorts—imprisoned by cultural stereotypes and corrupt chauvinism—attempt to fight their way out of demeaning situations by turning the tables on their oppressors, this is not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)