Sucker Punch [2011]

Director Zack Snyder has been very successful so far, with movies like “300″ and the underrated “Watchmen” on his résumé. Now he has directed and co-written yet another film that takes place in an artificial environment, with characters and story as strange as its title. I’ll go ahead and say that I was terribly disappointed. Emily Browning (“A Series Of Unfortunate Events”, “The Uninvited”) plays the central character, a young woman who has been wrongfully committed to an insane asylum (blame her pervert stepdad). During her stay, she bonds with four other inmates (played by Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung), and plans for an escape. In the meantime, she finds bliss by escaping into her own imagination, where she pictures her and her friends kicking butt in a series of weird action sequences. These scenes are staged in a video game-like manner, and of course this would have been fine if they were interesting. But because they look so unreal and cartoonish, I couldn’t care less about the outcome of the story and its characters. Throughout this mess, I was reminded of how completely uninteresting it is to watch someone else play a certain video game. Now Imagine yourself watching someone play for almost two hours. Nasty sight right? “Sucker Punch” is exactly that; it opens with a bang, then loses its pedigree way too early, until it reaches a very unsatisfying conclusion. In between, its just one lousy ride. Very atypical from visionary director Zach Snyder.