Sucker Punch
3 stars out of 10
Genre: Action
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Run time: 120 min.
Writer: Zack Snyder
Director: Zack Snyder
Year: 2011
Director Zack Snyder’s sudden emergence can rightly be likened to that of M. Night Shyamalan. Both directors burst onto the scene with a huge hit (Shyamalan with "Sixth Sense" and Snyder with "00" and were instantly labelled as visionaries. Soon, they entered the rare pantheon of directors whose very name was used to sell a movie. Unfortunately, Snyder’s career seems to still be on a path similar to Shyamalan’s, in that his output has offered steadily diminishing returns. "Sucker Punch" is sadly his equivalent to "Lady in the Water" a silly, misguided vanity project that thinks itself far more profound than it actually is.
Any discussion of the plot is largely irrelevant, given that the plot is both virtually non-existent and utterly beside the point. It has something to do with a teenage girl using cross-genre action movie fantasies to escape her harsh reality, sort of like "Pan’s Labyrinth"without the raison d’etre. And that’s really it. It’s an excuse for a series of wild, disconnected action scenes involving girls in tight outfits. The end.
There are visually arresting moments in these fantasy sequences, for sure. They are of the Michael Bay, music video variety, pretty without looking remotely real. But Snyder gives us no reason to care about anybody involved, no tension, no compelling reason to keep watching other than to hope for more pretty images. But there are plenty of other movies like that. That’s not the greatest crime here.
The greatest crime here is that Snyder seems to think he’s making art. Just as Shyamalan seemed to think the very silly "Lady"had something meaningful to say about the power of creativity, Snyder really seems to think there’s some profound message, perhaps about female empowerment, that all this is working towards. But he fails to recognize that simply having women kick ass is not empowerment. He’s still exploiting. He just doesn’t have the artistic brains to recognize it.
If "Sucker Punch"is his "Lady in the Water" let’s just hope that his next project, "Superman" isn’t his "Last Airbender".
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