Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch doesn't all work by a long shot, but it confirms my sense that Snyder belongs near the top of a very short list of directors who are trying to reinvent a personal, auteurist vision of cinema at the most commercial, mass-market, attention-disordered end of the spectrum.

Begins in the land of lunacy and ends up somewhere on the far side of deranged.

Though Zack Snyder is known as an action director, he is a genuine artist and one of the most exciting and promising filmmakers to emerge in the past 10 years. His new movie, Sucker Punch - let's just say it - is a failure, but there's so much talent on that screen that the movie can't be dismissed as a waste of time.

This movie isn't bad in the way some incompetently made movies are bad; this is bad because there's much skill evident in a pointless endeavor.

Punch manages to cram more slow motion into its first few minutes than a season of NFL highlights, all of "Inception" and every one of those NBC promos where the casts of whatever failing police procedural walk menacingly towards the camera.

If I were to guess how Hollywood envisions the inside of a teenage boy's brain, it would look exactly like Zack Snyder'sSucker Punch."

Snyder must have known in preproduction that his greasy collection of near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale wasn't going to satisfy anyone but himself.

This movie is visually stunning. Amazing cinematography, direction, photography, every single scene is brilliantly set up. It's best enjoyed if you go in knowing absolutely nothing about it, like I did, but if you really want to know, it's a comic-book inspired allegorical deconstruction of the female power fantasy, and it's executed flawlessly. Only an uncultured moron would dislike this masterpiece.

I avoided watching “**** Punch” for years, because of all of the hate it got from reviewers, but I don't get it. I certainly won't try to convince anyone that this is a masterpiece, but it is totally worth a watch for the incredible visual style, if nothing else. I give it a C, if you've already seen the best, but you insist on watching a movie, try this one out.

Watched this in 2020, aware of its mixed reputation. Can't say I really liked it, but at the same time it was different from most action movies and that's a plus. A movie that blends fantasy and reality, with the former mirrored by the latter (or vice versa). It fails where most action movies do, in the boring action sequences that fail to capture one's attention for long. Also, characters are barely there, underdeveloped and uninteresting. Like most movies nowadays, it unfortunately proposes yet again the assumption "man is evil, cowardly and good for nothing; woman is good, courageous and unstoppable", and yet it failed to please feminists nonetheless, duh. That's because they want movies like "The Last Jedis" where men are not only all of the above, but also under complete control by women, treated like worthless pets that are punished when they pee on the carpet. All in all, an interesting and unusual concept but a less than perfect execution. A movie that does look like a videogame or several, now Demon's Souls, now stampunk CoD, now Deus Ex. I don't know what would make it better, but then I generally dislike movies that are too heavy on action. At least it's more absurd action than usual.

When I started watching this movie I was expecting something different than it actually was. However, I don't feel disillusioned with it because I've had very low expectations. The whole story revolves around a girl (we never know her real name but only a nickname, Baby Doll) who is hospitalized in an asylum after trying to protect her younger sister from a dangerous stepfather (responsible for their mother's death and eager to lay hands on their money). Unfortunately, the shot hits the sister and not the stepfather, who bribes the director of an asylum to lobotomize her, which would make her forget everything, nullifying her personality. From here, the film is lost as it enters a parallel universe, imagined by the girl in order to escape her own reality. The asylum ceases to be a madhouse to become into a clandestine brothel for very rich clients, and where she is forced to dance seductively. With each dance, however, she more deeply imagines surreal worlds of fighting, avoiding facing real life and feeding the dream of escaping. Visually, the film is very good: high doses of good quality CGI, great cinematography with good framing and some very original camera shots, good sets, consistent and well-crafted costumes. But this isn't enough to make a good movie if we consider cinema's the art of telling a story through images, words and gestures. The script is the biggest flaw in the film: almost everything it shows is imagined inside the head of the main character, but the audience doesn't quite understand the reason that led her to such a mental escape. There is also no effort to articulate this with what happens to the character in real life. We are simply disassociated from reality, and this makes the film complicated to understand. Another problem is the lack of originality in the script, which randomly blends a huge range of influences, copied or reinvented from dozens of other films and series, such as "Harry Potter", "Lord of the Rings", "Twillight Zone", "Charlie's Angels", "Kill Bill", "Naruto", "Dragon Ball" etc. And everything gets worse when we see theatrical and stylized fighting scenes, clearly inspired by Japanese anime. The way the movie tries to be sexy without getting it is also unpleasant. Emily Browning is the best actress that the film presents, and her character is the one that is properly developed, but she's far from what I would call a sexy woman, and a blonde wig (looks like a cosplay) and a short skirt aren't enough to change that. At that point, she loses to the supporting cast, who compensate some lack of talent with more curvaceous bodies. The soundtrack is good, as it's consistent with the film's retro and punk environment, appearing at the right times and knowing how to disappear when its not needed.

If at the end of the "movie" had inserted instead of the credits the written "game over", I would have hated a lot less, because at least they would not have wanted to have the claim to be considered a "movie"!