Punch for Suckers
There are bad movies, and then there are baaaaaad movies. Sucker Punch fits precisely into the second category. There are so many reasons why it can claim the crown of terrible, including hokey (and repetitious) dialogue, uninteresting CG effects, vapid storytelling, and a rather frustrating ending, but those would not inspire me to write a review. Those are garden-variety nuisances. The reason why I would reach for the nearest working keyboard is this: a movie marketed this much for teenage viewers is way too offensive to be seen by them (or anyone else for that matter).
In my defense, I went to this film thinking I could preview it for my adolescent nieces, some of whom are into things like goth style and steampunk, and yes, the movie has that in spades. But it has terrible messages about the agency that young women possess. SPOILERS AND TRIGGERING CONTENT AHEAD.
Our heroine, known to us as Baby Doll (Emily Browning)—itself a term inflected with the kind of sex appeal that should make adults uncomfortable when situated on a teen character’s body—has just witnessed the death of her mother, and in the aftermath, namely the reading of the will, becomes terrified at her stepfather’s rage, for nothing of any import has been left to him. As he menaces Baby Doll and her nameless, younger sister, which may include physical or sexual assault components, Baby Doll pulls a gun on him but accidentally shoots and kills her sibling. Evil stepfather hauls her off to the “insane asylum” which looks like the dungeons in Gatticka, only dirtier and more foreboding. He pays off the head orderly (played by Oscar Isaac), who somehow manages to run the whole institution, to schedule a lobotomy five days hence, so she will never be able to relay her side of the story to the police. The orderly quickly gives her pills to transport her to “paradise,” and from there, we are whisked away to her alternate reality, from where she calculates her escape from the psych ward.
Of course a mid-teens girl would envision a breast-and-smoke-filled exotic dancer nightclub, a corrupt twist on The Wizard of Oz narrative in which her real life relations reappear as archetypes in her mind. The well intentioned psychotherapist (Carla Gugino) is an aging dance instructor, as captive as the dancers, who are all ruled with an iron fist by the orderly, and the dancers, one supposes, are other young women holed up in the asylum. We’re not supposed to ask, at the end of this torturous misuse of celluloid film, how the two realities managed to coexist, for it does appear that what happens in Baby Doll’s head happens at the institution. But don’t let me get ahead of myself.
It is the distant past, the time of ninjas and samurai, of swords crafted so exquisitely that they can slice marble columns like a red-hot knife through butter. And here is Baby Doll, and here is . . . Scott Glen? Secretariat, Bourne Ultimatum, Silence of the Lambs Scott Glen? As an Asian guru? Who is he, David Carradine? He tells her she needs five items to escape and find her freedom. Remember that. The end she seeks is freedom, people. I’m on board with freedom, sure. She needs a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a fifth item that only she can identify and find. Oh, great, thanks guru dude. When she selects her weapon, her journey will begin. Smartly, she procures the samurai sword that cuts through space and time, and figures out at the last possible second how to use the thing. So it is that our journey into 21st Century Orientalism is at its conclusion.
Back in the second level of hallucination—I think they stole this idea from the Inception writers—Baby Doll is back in the nightclub, immediately disliked by the other young dancers, for of course everyone has Stockholm syndrome, tons of cleavage, and an automatic hatred of new pretty girls. She’s going to have to earn her place as a dancer or be put out on the street. On goes Army of Me by Bjork, and after a lot of hesitation, she dances, which we don’t get to see. But trust the writers, it’s amazing. Nobody can look away. It’s like she has her own Special Ability. Dancenosis! After the brouhaha over who danced when in Black Swan, I’m thinking the producers played this right by never showing us any dancing whatsoever.
As she dances, she dips back into the lower level of dreamstate, and realizes that this is how she can acquire the items to get her freedom. Her freedom, people. She’s going to have to win over the others, however. Good thing this is exactly when the very creepy cook attempts to defile one of the dancers in his stockroom. Baby Doll is right there to save Rocket, by holding a knife to his throat. Is she vindicated because she found agency and didn’t kill someone in the process? Nope. But there is a glimmer of hope for Baby Doll: she’s finally said something. The first 35 minutes of the movie and nary a peep out of her. But now she turns to Rocket and asks if she’s okay.
With way more time spent cajoling a few other dancers to join in the escape plans, we now explore every aspect the steampunk universe can throw at us in one movie: World War I zombie, clockwork-driven German troops (yes, that’s right), cyborg fighters that look like ripoffs from the Terminator series, mechanical guards, and a baby and mother dragon. All of these targets except the dragons strangely protect the women’s innocence in the sense that’s they’re not really “killing” anything—none of their combatants are actually alive. And when faced with a German lieutenant and his superior, they focus only on stealing a map, leaving them both alive.
This makes the gutting of the baby dragon and the killing of its distraught mother actually tougher to watch and understand, and in the context of mother-baby bonds, almost comes off as a critique of abortion rights. I know, we can debate that issue, but the imagery in the film smacked of that for me. Next is the death of the mother, which repeats the death of Baby Doll’s mother at the start of the movie, so now she has metaphorically killed her whole family. She’s going to have to pay for these transgressions somehow. (Freedom, freedom)
While the deaths the dancers enact when loaded with weapons and sexy clothing are mostly fake, the pain inflicted on them is supposedly real. Two of them are shot by the nightclub owner—and are somehow killed in real life—and we’re led to believe that the asylum orderly chief sexually assaults them on a regular basis. I have seen this dichotomy of real vs. imagined assaults in other narratives before, and it usually plays out against the agency of one particular group who is beholden to the control of another. It’s the same in Sucker Punch. All of the young women’s victories are in their minds, and their reality is much darker, crueler, and despondent. As the psychotherapist finally catches up with the orderly’s crimes, Baby Doll is lobotomized by Jon Hamm in one of the creepiest cameos I have ever seen. Some character remarks that now she is in Paradise. So much for freedom.
What the frack? That sounds even more awful than I imagined it would be when I saw the trailer. SMH.
Yeah, it was all kinds of ridiculous awful. Go watch Avatar again; somehow it’s better.
Thanks for saving me $15 bucks to skip this on IMAX and wait until it’s in the Redbox.
According to the Laws of Star Trek (if they can be so applied to a hero movie director who is a bit of a franchise himself), given that 300 was terrible, but I really liked Watchmen, I’m hoping that if this terrible, Superman will be great!
Holy crap, is he in charge of the next Superman movie? I’ll wait for you to give me a green light!
I can’t WAIT to miss this. I was kinda hoping it was at least bad-B-movie bad. Doesn’t sound like it even merits a small screen viewing.
Fun to read the reivew though!
Okay, it’s wrong and I’m not proud, but I kind of want to see this film based on this review! I just wish it were more campy a la the craft!
@IrishUp: someday it could be on Netflix instant, and then you can watch it on a very small screen!
@Snarky: I wouldn’t begrudge you a viewing! And there is some campiness . . . especially with the Scott Glen scenes, and especially when he gives them life lessons a la a line with, “Oh, and another thing.” It became rather amusing.
Wow, this sounds monumentally bad. I just. What? Did someone just throw a bunch of steampunk in a blender, drink it, and then film themselves puking it up?
Yes, s.e., I think it was written by the folks who produce “Will It Blend?”
I really wanted this to be good, well let me rephrase, I really wanted this to be entertaining. Like in a Cheerleader Ninjas kind of way. I for the record loved that owl movie last year.
I wanted it to be good, too, and clearly they had a hell of a special effects budget. But it just isn’t worth the angina. Although I will say that the soundtrack was pretty good.
Does this go beyond the “so bad it’s funny” category that New Moon and certain Pauly Shore movies have achieved?
I’m all for getting teenage girls into steampunk because, well, it’s awesome and teenage girls need more awesome things in their lives, but yeah…from the way you describe it, this movie sounds just perfect for the creepy guy in the back of the theater who is just a little *too* interested in teenage girls.
@marlene: You hit the nail right on the head! Maybe when those teenage girls are 20 they could get a snarky kick out of this movie. There’s better fodder out there for steampunk and young women.
Okay, here we go.
Sorry but you’re wrong.
I don’t understand why everyone takes the asylum world (and the ending) to be the real world. It’s just as “real” as anything else in the film. Meaning it’s not real at all. It’s as much a fantasy as the whitewashed brothel and steampunk zombie Nazis.
Also that the ending comes across as disappointing or whatever is kind of the point. It’s not a victory at all because Baby Doll is still lobotomized and for all we know, Sweet Pea’s escape is just another fantasy.
What the movie does is call into question the way women are depicted in movies, particularly action movies. There’s a line early on where Sweet Pea mentions how all the roles she’s made to play in the brothel–helpless victim or prisoner or whatever–are done for the purpose of titillation. Look at it this way: the upper fantasy level of “hot chicks kicking ass” is what everyone went to see and is, presumably, the safe and harmless version of the events. The brothel is, of course, the movie theater. It doesn’t matter that these are women kicking ass, they’re still doing it for the entertainment of a primarily male audience. Then the asylum level pulls out and shows what all this faux-girl power stuff really is: exploitation. Indulgent fantasies that only further a culture that degrades and exploits women.
Sucker Punch is really one of the strangest and more complex mainstream movies I’ve seen in a while. The whole thing comes off as, well, a sucker punch to anyone who went into the movie with the expectation of being thrilled by scantily-dressed women with guns. As well as anyone who criticized it for that reason.
First off, you don’t have to say you’re sorry to say I’m wrong. Second, I stand by my review. I never said folks should avoid it because it has scantily clad women, I said it was to be avoided because as a narrative, on all of it pseudo-fantasy levels or “real” levels, insists that women and girls can’t actually occupy a space of agency. They have next to no voice with law enforcement, they’re constantly being victimized by men, no matter the power level of those men, and their hopes for freedom—which can never be realized—are only conceived of as possible via their sexual exploitation (e.g., dancing and intercourse). It’s a hopeless vision and because there are so many other scantily clad women who get better results for themselves and others—Xena, Katniss, Lara Croft, among other examples—I’d rather my teenage nieces watch those things instead.
This review sorta makes me want to see the film, though I can certainly go along with not recommending it to young girls.
I don’t mind spoilers myself, but I would suggest the “SPOILER ALERT” show up before the cut in future posts.
My habit is to put the spoiler alert right before the spoilers, so people can read as far as possible before deciding to cut and run, but I’ll look at that next time, redlami.
“and their hopes for freedom—which can never be realized—are only conceived of as possible via their sexual exploitation (e.g., dancing and intercourse)”
Except you’re still falling for the trap that the ending is a happy one where everyone’s dreams come true and they all live happily ever after. It’s a happy ending in the way Starship Troopers has a happy ending. That is, it’s superficially happy but underneath all that it’s like what the hell? It’s a dehumanizing victory, literally. Baby Doll chooses to play by the system and ends up a literal doll at the end. You can get your victory but you’ll be objectified in the process. It’s a metaphor. Or something.
It’s explained in the asylum world the Gugino’s character has the patients recreate their traumas on-stage so they can modify them in order to empower themselves. As such, I don’t think the movie completely rejects the whole idea of the scantily-clad heroine. Rather it seems to be saying that as long as there’s a system in place in which men pull the ropes, the whole sexy badass archetype will just be another example of exploitation.
I don’t think I’m falling for a trap, in that I haven’t been duped into anything. Just because I have concerns about a narrative in which no woman is free doesn’t mean I think the only acceptable ending is a fairy tale one. Sure, movies and other texts are open to interpretation; as far as this text is concerned, I don’t see that it leaves anything open for actual female empowerment. All of the images of women that we see–assault victims, corpses, ruined girls and women–the cumulative imagery here, the violence they suffer from the very first seconds of the film to the moment we fade to the credits, it’s not set up as an example of exploitation to be resisted. It’s set up as hopelessness. I think there are plenty of narratives out there that keep open some room for liberation, but this is not one of them.
I disagree, considering the ending monologue that argues that the solution doesn’t lie in some fantasy world, it lies in the hands of the people watching the movie. It’s not hopelessness, it’s a call to arms, so to speak.
Personally I see no difference between how this movie presents sexism and oppression and something like, say, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul in which they give no solution to racism.
Not having seen the movie, it’s hard for me to engage fully with this conversation, but I do think it’s reasonable to ask whether exploitative content is being presented for criticism, or without comment. And I’d note that it sounds like there are some really alarming thematic elements here re:mental illness, forcible institutionalisation, and lobotomies that were poorly explored, at best.