SUCKER PUNCH [2011]

WOULD IT BE KNIFE AND FORK OR THE DESSERT SPOON, SIR?

2011, USA

Zack Snyder

7 // 10

Can you dance your way out of the nightmare? Is fantasy a good medium to talk about real problems? Dude, is this even, like, real or somethin'? There's only one way to find out!

If I had to choose one word to describe Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, I'd go for 'confused'. Not 'confused' as in 'completely lost beyond any hope', it's definitely much more 'confused' as in 'not entirely sure what I'm trying to be but at least I know I'm trying to be something', but from my humble point of view is definitely confused enough to make that almost a feature. You know, an Apple kind of feature, when your iPhone doesn't do something right and the barrista-like Apple Store employee tells you that you're just holding it wrong. Yep, that kind of feature. Which might be a bit of a cruel thing to say, but then again I found it a bit cruel on the Sucker Punch's side to promise to me to take me to Rome, Amsterdam and Tokyo, but all I saw were Leonardo da Vinci, Schipol and Haneda. And then, it's all a bit like asking three different Michelin Star chefs to cook their signature dishes and then putting those dishes on one plate. The skill is there, the ingredients, the taste and presentation second to none. It just doesn't necessarily work well together, that's all. And yet, you might have noticed, I scored it quite high with 7 out of 10. Why, oh why, you may wonder. 

I think the most honest answer would be that I kind of admire this film. It may not be doing everything right but it's definitely trying to do something different. Something interesting. It may not actually deal with certain problems it portraits, but it features them in a way that is serious enough for me not to claim that I've 'enjoyed' watching it. I can say I enjoyed parts and aspects of it but I could never say that I liked Sucker Punch. It would feel wrong. Just like dressing pretty girls in sexy outfits and making them fight their way out of sexual abuse. Might look good on a poster, but the context changes everything.

But then, of course, the film doesn't take us all the way. That's where the fantasy kicks in and the whole film becomes something different entirely. Only that we all know it's not real, so it doesn't really count but it's still serious enough not to become a complete escapism. There's always a little rock in a shoe that won't let us run, an ache in your back you can only feel sometimes, only when you move in a certain way. There's always something that just doesn't feel right...

Having said all that, I think I finally arrived at a conclusion. It's not as much fantasy or some sort of a dream fiction, but an attempt at creating an adult fairy tale, adding a touch of reality and psychology to a fable. A story in which the evil stepmother (so to speak) is not just a character you hide in the woods from, she's an actual menace, it's what she would have been like if she lived in that creepy house at the end of your street. The question is: CAN it work? Well, it probably could, but in order to achieve that, on the grittiness----fantasy slider, Snyder should have stayed a couple of notches more to the left. The dance/fight sequences are fantastic to watch (and have Scott Glenn in them, which, without those scenes, sadly wouldn't happen) but they just didn't feel to me like parts of the same story. Or maybe it's just that as a dream-within-a-dream (as opposed to being an escapist dreams on a 'normal' level and in their own right) they seem to me just that little bit superfluous and with that they create a dissonance that resonates through the rest of the story. 

So the bottom line is, that Sucker Punch is maybe not as good as it could have been, maybe flawed here and there. But if anything, it's from trying too much, not from the lack of. And despite its flaws is still more than capable to move and touch you, and to make itself memorable for all the good reasons. It's a film I might not want to go back to, but it's a film I'd happily include in my collection and display it on the shelf. Watching it once might be perfectly enough, but watch it you should.