Sucker Punch

I just got around to watching this film today. I’ll admit one of the reasons it wasn’t on my “Must See Immediately” list was the less than glowing reviews from people like Sean and my friend who is @ambiguous_user on twitter. But the allure of WWII type weaponry and girls that knew how to use them was eventually too much for me to ignore and I loaded up my disk from Netflix to take a peek.

The beginning was a little much for me to handle. The whole mom dying and step-dad committing unconscionable acts of violence and thievery in retaliation for being written out of the mom’s will was too much to believe. I would hope that even in that 50’s era it would be too difficult to stuff a frightened young lady in a mental institution after her younger sister ended up dead. The cops would have had questions about the situation even back then. But then again something had to spur the trip to the mental ward to enable the scene where the lobotomy is starting, right?

From there the world of fantastic locations, fight scenes and story transitions start and you have to keep up or you will get lost. Don’t try and figure out what era you are in - the technology the music the weaponry and the creatures will never fit with any specific era. Only the quest for the map, the fire, and knife and the key matters. Baby Doll, Amber, Rocket, Blondie and Sweat Pea all pull together to try to get the job done and we get to hang on and watch the magic happen.

The movie is not as sensual or sexual as I thought it would be going in. It’s really more of a tale of female strength and residuality.

The action scenes and graphics are nicely done. The hand to hand combat is straight out of the Blade series or Matrix franchise.

It is Sweat Pea’s story? Is it Baby Doll’s story? Is it a story in a girl’s head? Was it all just a dream? Well…I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Would I recommend the movie? It’s a good Saturday or Sunday afternoon laying around the house movie. I’m glad I didn’t see it in the theater since the story was difficult to follow. But since you won’t be seeing it in the theater at this point I’d say give it a go if you are willing to give a movie a chance. It just may surprise you.

~Shooter Out

Did you mean resolve? Resilience?

As a whole the film is not great, and in many ways not enjoyable. It is quite disturbing once you realize what all had been going on, and there is no satisfying resolution. But despite all this I find myself revisiting the film every now and then, so I can revel in the action packed fantasy segments. After-all who doesn’t like ass-kicking girls, dragons or steampunk Nazis?

It was an interesting movie. Visually stunning, but hard to connect with story wise. The trailer made is look so much more exciting than it actually was. The fantasy action elements were by far the best part. Still worth a watch though.

What he said!