Sucker Punch, visual eye-candy with no substance, or something more?

Well, I guess with a movie this questionable yet visual, it was inevitable that someone to a review on it. And I guess that someone will be me…lol.

Some have said Sucker Punch is simply over-stimulated eye candy (in more ways than one) in a 120min extended fanboy commercial. Other say it’s a new rendition of GG live version of a anime, or a videogame. While even a few have compared its female empowerment ala fem fatale-ness approach is reminiscent to films like La Femme Nikita or Thelma and Louise. For myself, well…it’s hard to sum up a film like this, but I can try to put my two cents into what I felt about it.

From a visual perspective, I did find its use of CGI interesting, and fairly eye catching (yes the actual CGI I’m referring to, the actresses we’ll get to later). The missions sequences combined with the stunt choreography (though some was more CGI rendering no question) were done well. Considering the feudal Japan, Steam punk Nazis, cybernetic androids, and medieval-fantasy references as well, I can see where all the critiques of it being a videogame come from, nailing pretty much every sci-fi anime vid-game visual you can think of...oh and of course with most of the lead characters all supped up fighting ‘bad girls’ in interesting attire, well I guess that would be considered added eye gravy, (epsically for some more than others).

The plot itself is somewhat interesting, though somewhat predictable. I did like the idea of a reality within a reality, but at the same time it’s been done before (i.e. Inception, The Matrix, Tron etc). I do however like how each reality is approached and more specifically how it is entered, via Babydoll’s dance numbers, which we never actually see, interesting concept indeed. The acting was slightly wooden in some parts and a tad over-the-top here and there, but considering the style of the film, in some small way it was to be expected.

Overall, this film did surprise me...somewhat. With what I had heard from early reviews and from word of mouth, I was expecting it to be a total flop. However even with the bad rep Sucker Punch was getting, and my personal motto to always see a film for myself and make my own judgement on it. In this case I’m glad I did, since I did find the film surprisingly better than I expected. Of course it’s nowhere near the same scale as films similar to it in the past, but it was entertaining, and I was entertained. I highly doubt this film will win any sort of an award, but it wouldn’t surprise me if It became a cult underground classic, just look at Dark City.

Oh and on a side note, speaking of cult classics, those that might be attending this year’s Fan Expo (or any similar convention coming up) I get a feeling there will be a lot of cosplay (costume play) uniforms inspired by this film. Count on it!