Sucker Punch Review

I’m not sure what it is, but lately I’ve been seeing films I don’t typically watch. Maybe it’s just morbid curiosity. Sucker Punch doesn’t quite fit into that category. When I first saw the previews for it I thought it looked amazing. And then it came out and reviews trashed it hard. I resisted when it came out on blu-ray, but that doesn’t last long. I had to see what was so horrible about it, so I checked it out.
And you know what? They were wrong. Or maybe they just didn’t understand or appreciate Asian influenced cinema enough and that’s really what this is. The story isn’t deep, the characters don’t get overly complex and the action is HIGHLY stylized. Think live action Anime. Some scenes appear to be more like music videos than a scene from a movie. But that’s how it’s meant to be. That’s not to say you won’t care about the characters. While they had no real depth, they were all enjoyable.

The story…well…it gets a bit confusing to describe and much easier to see. Let’s just say it’s about a girl called Babydoll who accidently shoots her sister while trying to shoot her abusive dad. She’s sent to an insane asylum where she is about to be lobotomized and that’s kind of where the movie starts. Sort of. Much of the story takes place in a dream and then a dream within a dream. Each of the characters in her real life represents a part of herself in her dreams. The goal is to escape from where she is trapped. But in order to do so, she has to find a few items in the dreams action sequences in order to gain the strength and courage to help free herself and others. Or something. Like I said, it’s harder to describe, you just have to see it play out. And that’s the thing…the story is told more visually than it is verbally. That's not to say there isn't plenty of conversation to help us understand what's happening.

I was surprised I enjoyed this film so much. Typically films that are more action than plot depth bore me but this one was unique. It managed to convey emotion without an abundance of words. The visual strength of the film wasn’t just the action, it was how it captured the expressions of the characters. You find yourself glued to the screen, not wanting to miss a second of the visual feast and wondering how the heck Babydoll is going to escape this crazy world as well as the world she herself created in her mind.

8/10