Sucker Punch (2011)

Movie quotes:
"Who honors those we love for the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us and at the same time sings that we’ll never die? Who teaches us what’s real, and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live and what we’ll die to defend? Who chains us, and who holds the key that can set us free? It’s you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!"
- Sweet Pea (closing line)

At a glance:
Less a movie and more a collection of music video gaming sequences, Sucker Punch offers a wealth of visual candy and a teensy bit of plot

Our review (with spoilers):
Five girls work as dancers/escorts and are virtual prisoners of an evil man named Blue. They escape, literally, into a dreamworld where they fight mechanized dead Nazis, fire-breathing dragons, or glowing-eyed giant Asian martial artists. Fortunately for (some of) us, they do all this while still wearing their midriff bearing sexy dance outfits. To call this misogynistic is like calling water ‘wet’. That’s obvious but then these are dream/video game sequences and the girls are dressed just like girls in these video games have been attired for 10 plus years. This is a hen’s night out movie, and all five hens make a game effort to get it to work, and perhaps none more so than Abby Cornish, the gamest hen of them all. Sorry, couldn’t help it.

There are times when watching a film that I become painfully aware of said film’s "target demographic" and realize that I am not in it. Not even close. Such is the case with Sucker Punch. I can feel in my bones that if I were, say, between 15 and 23 again, I would think this film was the coolest thing ever. The girls are hot and young and they wear plenty of eyeliner. Even most of the guys wear eyeliner. If  there’s an Oscar for Best Eyeliner, Sucker Punch has got the statue – and on a more serious note, they’ll probably win a second one for Set Design or Special Effects - and probably for Sexiest Fetish Outfits.

But despite its general lowly ranking amongst critics, if one treats this film as a series of music video escapist fight game vignettes, anchored together by a dead-simple story, it’s a success.

Rating: 2.5 of 4

Other reviewers said:
"Sucker Punch is what you'd get if you mixed Mulholland Drive, Showgirls and Tomb Raider and then turned it into a music video."
- Matthew Toomey (ABC Radio Brisbane)