Review – Sucker Punch

Zac Snyder visionary director of 300, The Watchmen & Legends Of The Guardians brings us a new psychological thriller that despite negative reviews from other people stands out as one of his best.

Babydoll (Emily Browning) is sent to a mental institution after accidentally killing her sister while trying to protect her from her evil stepfather who tried desperately to steal their fortune. Doll uses her imagination to escape from the horrible reality of the mental home to take her and four friends Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jenna Malone) Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jackie Chung) to come together and escape the prison.

Led by Doll the girls escape to the fantasy world where they battle samurai’s, robots and dragons all while wearing Pussycat Dolls outfits and never breaking a sweat. While this may sound robotic-ally generic Snyder uses the camera and sound to enhance this and create a video-game type atmosphere that makes the unbelievable, believable.

Music is perhaps the most important and impressive feature of the film, in comparison to the way “Moulin Rouge” used music to enhance the story and fill in when no dialogue was provided. The music consists of Queen, Skunk Anansie, Bjork and Emily Browning. Particularly used in the opening sequence the music is quite confronting and immerses the audience into the story and particularly the dream state switches.

Overall this movie has some great elements and some clunky ones, there are a few slow parts and the depth of the actresses is ok but not too much. A lot is left to the end to make sense of the movie but it is well worth the wait.