Director: Zack Snyder
Country of origin and year of release: US, 2011
In this frankly mind boggling film, Zack Snyder - a man more known for superhero and zombie films than for psychological thrillers - applies the styles, codes and conventions of the superhero film to what can only be described as a 21st Century take on the Victorian era incarceration of difficult women and girls story. Think Avengers meets The Woman In White.
It only just comes off and the main reason it works is because Snyder applies the same superhero action codes and conventions to the modern day incarceration of difficult girl protagonist bit of the plot as he does to the fantasy sequences, meaning the whole thing is incredibly high octane, over the top, and stylised to the hilt from the minute the film opens.
Baby Doll (all the characters have names like this - you just have to go with it...) has just lost her mother, has been abused by her stepfather (who, it is implied, was probably complicit in her mothers death) and has accidentally shot and killed the younger sister she was trying to protect from said stepfather. In shock, she is driven to a suitably gothic looking hospital where she is drugged, money changes hands, and she is admitted as a patient, having been declared insane. This all happens in the first five minutes.
Once inside the hospital, she finds herself performing menial work alongside a group of other young women who - like her - seem as sane as the next person.
Then, it gets weird.
Instead of finding ourselves in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest territory, our heroine instead finds herself in some high stakes version of Moulan Rouge.
No, I still don't get that bit either.
Anyway, suspend your disbelief and strap in for the ride because it's about to get weirder still.
When Baby Doll is forced to dance for the various sleazy blokes who pay to be entertained by the mental hospital patients, she goes on a journey inside her head to make it bearable, taking the viewer with her.
In her head, she goes on a series of quests, in which she needs to face various perils and defeat various foes in order to retrieve the items she and the other girls will need in order to escape the hospital. Initially she is fighting alone but, as she persuades the other inmates to help her, they also join her in her fantasy adventures. There's a standard samurai fantasy to begin with, then later a steampunk take on WWII, then a high stakes explosives on a train task. Not all of the quests occur without costs, and the reality behind the fantasy is often hard to take, especially when it goes wrong.
On one level, you have to admire the sheer audacity of the plot, but there are aspects of it that do feel a bit queasy. There is the essential incarcerations of difficult women plot, and how it plays out, up to and including the way in which toxic masculinity, itself a form of madness, is allowed to roam unfettered within the hospital. There are many victims here, and the film skips lightly over a number of the many deaths that occur. Similarly, its very much up to the viewer to decide if the female characters are purely there to be viewed as sex objects by the viewer, as much as by the men who pay to exploit them within the film, or if they are fully rounded characters who, while exploited, are given agency and heroic characteristics. It is hard to form a consensus on that.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the film, or simply the moment when it lapses into poor taste, is the closing credits sequence. We have, quite literally, watched a man run rampant through an entire enclosed community, terrorising, exploiting, killing and profiting from multiple women. He has even forged signatures and caused medical procedures to take place illegally on a number of patients. How then is it OK to have that character dancing and lip syncing with the doctor, who he has undermined and taken advantage of professionally and (possibly) personally throughout the film as though this was a comedy? What The Actual Fuck?! As the young people say.
I have watched Sucker Punch about three or four times now, and every time the closing credits sequence has felt like a slap in the face. I think it's because, without it, the film would make a kind of sense and have a sense of resolution, however harrowing, but with it... it feels like the sucker punch of the films title.
Sucker Punch is a film that does benefit from being watched more than once, and it does have a lot of style, a great soundtrack, cleverly executed and beautifully filmed moments within the narrative, as well as interesting things to say about power, control and madness. But it's fair to say that any aspect of the film that troubles you on the first watch will most likely still trouble you on future watches.
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