Punch Sucker

Some of you might be ending up hating me for what I am going to tell. So, the good general good review of Sucker Punch of one of my friends made me want to watch it, even though the general critics gave it poor reviews. By the time I saw less than half of the film I knew why.

Sucker Punch tells the story of a girl who ends up in a mental institution by her stepfather, who is just after her money which she inherited from her mother when she died. She has five days before the gets lobotomised, five days to escape the institution. Before she even knows that she will need to escape our little girl, even though 20 of age still looking like a innocent 12 year old, takes note of items she will need to escape. Soon we get introduced to the other characters that will run amok, scarcely dressed, even outside of the dance and dream sequences. Whatever was in the head of Zack Snyder when he wrote the scrip was more one of his sexual fantasies poured into a thin plot than anything worth those two hours it took to watch the film.

The mental institution has nothing that gives away that it is a mental institution, there are more hints that it just another 50's orphanage, where the 20 year old girls have to pleasure other men in the club owned by the owner of the institution. As rule for the club and the girls that need a purpose, they each perform a dance. When it is BabyDoll's turn she does not dance, even though we get hints that she is dancing, she retreats into her fantasy where she meets up with a wise man who tells her what she needs to escape. No minute in this film actually contains any of the girls dancing, all they do is prance around in their too short dresses and whore costumes.

The dream/fantasy sequences range from steampunk nazi's they have to defeat to orks and dragons. There is no actual link to the real world and the fantasy world where these chicks kill and find the items to escape. It is just another mindless video game we are watching, visuals are thrown around to cover up the lack of plot. The story of these girls is just a sick as the visuals, not enough depth in the story and not enough clothes to make this a story of female empowerment.

The story is overthrown by mindless action without a back story. If this is another grindhouse film, it isn't worth the title. Even though it is more or less women exploitation, it is poorly told and all the action is based around the little clothes they are wearing and a very sexual dance that is full of groaning and moaning according to the other characters. The skin thick plot, overload of special effects and mindless video game sense makes this film just one of those other women exploitation films and could almost be filed under erotica if it actually had sex or sexual abuse in it instead of sexual barking. Even the soundtrack that could have been a saviour for this piece of money making crap is just a stack of covers that according to Zack Snyder should function as the songs in Moulin Rouge just blast away any emotion that it could have bring up by the audience. Short this film has a lot of suck and not enough punch.