Sucker Punch

A very action-packed spectacle full of (almost) everything. The soundtrack was a bit too loud for my taste and it was composed of music that I am not very impressed with, but I have to admit that it was a perfect match for the images that Snyder conjured up. The relatively simple story is not worth criticizing, because with a more complicated plot Sucker Punch would probably not have been as impressive. The girls and women were very good, many scenes were not lacking in unexpectedly believable emotions, and I will probably watch the part inside the speeding train many times. Four and a half stars, and I'd love to see the director's cut. (10/20/2012)

Sucker Punch is a combination of decadent musical and dumb video-game adaptation. It’s built on a storyline set in “reality”, from which it escapes to musical numbers (video-game levels). The storyline, however, does not work and is here only to hold all of the fantasy-action detours together. And these detours, in which the heroines destroy Nazis, ninjas, dragons and orcs from The Lord of the Rings and robots from I, Robot, do not work for more than the first ten minutes, because they are merely a visual exhibition without any innovation. You might find some similarities to Tarantino’s Kill Bill in the way this film’s script is constructed, but Tarantino is “a bit” better screenwriter than Snyder – his storyline was more solid and developed through the individual episodic detours. The detours that make up Sucker Punch are self-serving, meaningless and bring nothing to the story. It is a pulpy mishmash that must have looked like a disaster waiting to happen when it was still only on paper. (03/24/2011)

Snyder is fantastic with visuals and music (anyone who has seen the brilliant but sadly underrated Watchmen knows this), but for God's sake, never, ever let him write his own scripts! If I were to rate only the composition of shots, the imaginative details, the spectacular slow motion (which, I don't know how Snyder does it, I don't mind it in his case) and the the soundtrack (“Army of Me” by Bjork made me foolishly believe I would love the film), it would be worth a full score. But the decadent pop-cultural, cringeworthy, scripted ballast, which also pretends to convey some higher message, was impossible to digest even with a full brain shutdown. Snyder is a great craftsman, but he needs a permanent whip over him and a humility within himself, which, on the other hand, was not lacking in his almost reverential adaptation of Moore's “Watchmen”. (04/01/2011)

It's you.. Nazis, zombies, robots, dragons, samurais and a group of beautiful girls against them. In other words, six reasons why Sucker Punch couldn't succeed globally. It has everything you can imagine when you want a big, opulent, bombastic blockbuster and the world couldn't handle such an explosion, because having all those hits in one movie is just too much. Snyder clearly fulfills many fantasies and despite a few reservations, I have to cheer for him. I could do without the somewhat forced contrast between painted fantasies and depressive reality (which ironically, I actually liked more), but in the end, it's because of where the story is heading that the ending almost knocked me off my feet. I won't see such a specific ride not only this year, but never again. And now, grab a katana and Baby Doll can start dancing. (06/18/2011)

A film of two extremes. At one point it's a perfectly flaring, greatly entertaining, action-packed and almost ingenious ride full of energy and spectacular shots, whilst at other points it's a dragging, boring and stupid show of meaningless dialogues. The sequences where the viewer has fun or is bored alternate regularly. Whenever someone started talking, I tried to look at the ground and not listen. Terrible. On the other hand, when the shooting started, I couldn't look away from the screen. Fantastic perfect worlds. The film was worth seeing just for the German soldier zombies from the First World War powered by a steam engine with a watch. Great. But all of this gloss is wrapped in a dull story set in a nuthouse, which is completely useless and uninteresting. Sucker Punch is like a really beautiful painting set in a really ugly frame. Overall, it’s average. (03/26/2011)