Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Review Tuesday: SUCKER PUNCH [2011]

Despite many critics panning this movie, many of my friends highly recommended it. I finally sat down to watch it recently. 



SUCKER PUNCH
A girl who is wrongly shut in a lunatic asylum has five days to escape before being lobotomized.
During the 1950s a woman died, leaving everything to her two daughters and nothing to their step-father. In a rage he decides to have his way with the girls. One girl ended up dead and the other shoots the man. He calls the police and has her locked in a corrupt asylum that an orderly (Blue Jones played by Oscar Isaac) promised to have her (Babydoll played by Emily Browning) lobotomized so she wouldn't be able to testify. The Doctor aka High Roller (John Hamm) would come in five days. 

Knowing full well what was at stake Babydoll enlists the help of other shut-ins Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung) to formulate  a plan of escape. The action sequences are really figments of Babydoll's imagination as a coping mechanism to the various situations they were faced with.

When this movie came out, it seemed like a fun action movie with tons of fan service for the leg-humper crowd. That may be so because the girls are girls are certainly dolled up and performing action sequences that the comic book crowd would love. But under the nicely polished CGI, special effects, explosions and other bits of action, it was really a movie about determination, friendship and sacrifice.

The ending was unexpected. It was depressing yet hopeful. It was a better pay off than I could've expected from what I thought this movie was about. 

It's worth watching for several reasons, but you might want to pay closer attention to whats going on to get the full impact of the film. 

By the way, Sucker Punch was the name of the performance the girls were putting on...


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