Sucker Punch
MPAA Rating – PG13 (for thematic material involving sexuality, violence and combat sequences, and for language.) I don’t remember much language, the sexuality is more sensual than erotic (meaning it isn’t sexy for the sake of being sexy), and the violence and combat is mostly stylized (video game-esque.)
Be prepared, you won’t know what hit you with Sucker Punch.
Some movie critics/reviewers gave Sucker Punch poor (if not terrible) reviews. They grossly misunderstood the movie. The reviews I read looked at the movie superficially. They portray the movie as a tale about 5 young girls in skimpy outfits fighting the most cliché villains: Nazi-Zombies, Orcs, a dragon, Robots, and Samurai-warriors. Certain scenes even play out like a video game.
Admittedly, that is what the images show us but the movie is about so much more than that. Without giving away too much, it is an endearing tale of Baby doll, the nickname given to the main character. Her mother dies and her stepfather (who is abusive to her and her younger sister) gets upset because the two girls inherit everything. After a tragic accident, Baby doll ends up in a mental hospital. There, she meets up four other girls who have been put in the institution. Their names are Rocket, Blondie, Sweet Pea, and Amber.
I will try to avoid spoilers, but this next part will dive a little deeper into the plot.
In order to escape the terrible situation that she is in, Baby doll creates an alternate reality to live in. In this reality, the hospital is actually a brothel, the head-orderly is a pimp, and the psychiatrist uses Polish Dance Therapy (pole dancing without the pole). In this reality, the girls all wear fairly traditional dancewear, i.e. leotards. So while the girls aren’t wearing pants and shirts, we see much less than in other PG13 movies. This secondary reality is better than the first, but it’s still not great so she creates an alternate reality inside the other (like Inception’s Dream-within-a-dream concept). In the 3rd reality, she uses an awesome 1911 handgun and a samurai sword, along with other weapons, to defeat the villains mentioned above. These villains are each guarding some object that will help the 5 protagonists escape the hospital. They need a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a 5th mystery-object. Whenever Baby doll dances, everyone in the room gets stunned into a trance, allowing the other girls to go find the real objects needed. If the movie were in fact meant only to arouse men with girls and guns, the director could have shown the girls doing their seductive dances. However, every time someone begins to dance, the camera zooms in to the dancer’s eye and transports her and the audience to this 3rd reality. The story isn’t about sex, arousal, or guns. Yes, the protagonists are good-looking girls, all about 23-25 years old, but that is just a median to portray the much deeper meaning of escapism, or making the best of your situation.
If you don’t understand the movie, you will see what the reviewers saw. If you have half a brain, you will see a beautifully artistic film about the quest for inner-peace (it almost has a religious aspect of it, without being religious at all). I gave this movie 4 stars. It is unique and bizarre, but it is definitely worth watching.
