Codename: Kitchen Knife: The Sucker Punch Review

By gingertastic_10 March 26, 2011 2 Comments

   

  
 

I will hold my ground when I say that Zack Snyder is the most unique director out there at this very moment. He get's a vision and rolls with it. While I didn't like 300 all that much, the style and direction was fantastic. Jump a few years later and Watchman continued with that style and became one of my favorite movies. Now in 2011 he is writing, producing and directing Sucker Punch. While most critics are panning it and throwing it to the way-side, I found this movie to be oddly enjoyable, if not totally unique. 
 

To try and explain the story would be a acid trip in and of itself. So, I'll try anyway. Babydoll's mother dies and she leaves everything to her and her sister. Her step-father is enraged and takes his anger out on the girls. As Babydoll gets away from her step-father, he goes after her little sister. Trying to save her little sister, Babydoll tries to shoot at him, only to kill her little sister instead. This brings her step-dad to send her to an insane asylum and have a lobotomy done on her so she forgets everything by paying off a orderly. Just as she's about to get the lobotomy, we are thrust into a different world, where everyone is basically a erotic dance or something. At this point I was fucking confused. But for her to get out she needs to find five things: A map, fire, knife, a key and the last one is a mystery. Every object is something that is in someone's possession. In order to get the objects, Babydoll distracts the person through dancing. The dancing is important cause it sends her into a fantasy. Yes, a fantasy within a fantasy, this is Inception worthy. But in this world, she controls everything. The fantasies serve as a way to make it entertaining while they are getting the objects. As my friend Braxton put it "who would want to see them going into a room and stealing something". The fantasies are what she is thinking when they are doing the retrieving process. It's pretty cool once you get it. 
 

The fantasies are also where the movie shines. The CG is breathtaking, so well done and realized. It spans a samurai fight, WWII battle with zombies, mid evil castle and futuristic city.This kind of diversity keeps things fresh and though you never really feel that they are in any danger since they are just laying waste to everything. The action scenes are crazy and great to watch. The samurai one, which is the first, is by far the coolest of the bunch. It's unfortunate that these scenes aren't long enough, more time is spent out of them then in them. I never wanted the fight scenes to end, only because everything outside of it was so weak. I only felt it was weak because I had no idea what was going on. There was a scene near the end that helped me realized everything, but they really shouldn't have made it that hard to follow.
 
Along with the action and CG the music also helps the movie shine. They picked the right stuff for the right moments. With an opening remake of Sweet Dreams , it's all pretty good. 
 
  

  
The very definition of sucker punch is, "blow made without warning, allowing no time for preparation or defense on the part of the recipient". While it might be cliched to say it, but that's exactly what I felt when I watched this movie. It kind of just throws things at you, mostly without warning. It's kind of a you'll either love it or hate it. I've stopped reading film critics reviews, and it's also the reason I don't ever go to Screened, because they overanalyze and go "it's terrible don't ever go see this movie". There's people out there that really enjoy this type of stuff and I'm included. I go to movies to be straight up entertained, and for the most part Sucker Punch delivers on that very well. Like any movie it drags a bit, but Snyder continues to make movies with a style unlike anything out there.
 

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