(Full disclosure: As I said on here I planned to see this in 3D, IMAX, the works. I did learn in the eleventh hour, however, that it was a 3D conversion done in post and I cannot in good conscience put my money towards that kind of atrocity, so instead I caught the 2D version we had at work.)
I went into this movie with no illusions about what I expected from it. This was an excuse to get amazing visuals on the screen, supported by a plot that ranged from secondary to non-existant. The movie hit the ground running on all cylinders, and delivered exactly that. Layered like some version of Inception dreamed up by an adolescent boy, we see our heroine "Baby Doll" (Emily Browning) slip deeper and deeper into levels of daydream and defense mechanism. We are taken to archaic asylums, Moulin Rouge-esque bordellos, World War I trenches, realms of sci-fi and fantasy. There are dragons, demon samurai with chainguns, "steam-powered, clockwork" zombies, and things so beautifully high-concept that by the time killer robots on Titan show up they're positively mundane. And I haven't even begun to mention the Sexy Girls fighting their way through all of them by way of swords, guns and helicopters. Again, if you're looking for a coherent plot to connect these things, you're opening yourself up for disappointment.
There have been a fair amount of movies lately, in this burgeoning age of 3D that put visuals before plot (Avatar, Tron: Legacy to name a couple that immediately stick out) but both like to pretend their "biodigital jazz" somehow mattered beyond looking pretty. I'd like to imagine even the makers of Sucker Punch knew what they had and embraced it. That's why almost the whole of the exposition you do get is available in the trailers. However, that did not stop the cast from trying, and actually everyone turned in a very good performance when they needed to, the girls all filled an archetype, Hamm and Gugino had fine, albeit small roles and especially Oscar Isaac (who I must confess I thought was David Krumholtz for most of the movie) did some very good, over-the-top acting, providing the film in turns both a villain and comic relief.
And something must of course be said of director Zack Snyder. This was his first film not adapted from another source, written by himself and Steve Shibuya. In his previous movies, Snyder has forced a lot of other people's ideas to coexist with a rather loud, anarchic visual style (which, while not always critically adored, I don't think I've disliked a single one of his movies yet, personally). Sucker Punch is that style set loose, and yet you can see Snyder's hand somewhat tempered. His trademark overuse of slow-motion in action sequences (300, Watchmen) doesn't really show up until almost 90 minutes into this film, even though there were plenty of other moments he could have shoved it in.
It wasn't perfect, even just regarding it as a series of awesome images. There were some issues of pacing and editing, the switches between the extreme fantasy scenes and the bridge sequences tended to be a bit jerky as the film hits the brakes, and as the film hits the denouement you can tell it's burnt itself out and is just winding down. However, it does come around a little at the very end. I spent most of this movie semi-faciously thinking the one thing it was missing was a musical number, and as the credits began to role, it essentially granted me that one final wish. Although if what I'm told was true, a director's cut may add even more into the film proper.
I think the point I'm making is, this isn't very everyone, but if you're heading into this with the right mindset going into this, the bad is far outweighed by the good. Or, failing that, the awesome.
Images taken from Warner Bros' official Sucker Punch site.
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