"Sucker Punch" is the work of director Zack Snyder—whose previous efforts include "300" and "The Watchmen"—so walking into the theater, you have to know what type of film you are getting yourself into. The introduction, featuring dramatic, booming music, a majority of slow motion shots, close-ups and bleak and textured scenery, is to be expected. It is essentially the same visual strategy that Snyder used in his previous two films, and though it's not a surprise here, the technique is still very effective.
The plot of this strange film is centered around Baby Doll (Emily Browning), a 20-year-old girl who, after the death of her mother and sister, is sent to an insane asylum by her abusive stepfather. Once inside the asylum, she begins to enter an alternate reality in which she must defeat adversaries and complete tasks to survive and ultimately escape from the real-world mental facility.
Other notable members of the cast include Oscar Isaac as Blue Jones, a staff member at the asylum, who then becomes the owner of an old-timey nightclub in Baby Doll's alternate reality. John Hamm plays a "High Roller" for whom Baby Doll's virginity is supposedly being saved, if she doesn't find a way out.
Baby Doll and her fellow inmates attempt to escape by first stealing an assortment of necessary items, which they do while Baby is distracting the staff members with her dancing that apparently causes them to go into a trance. Once Baby begins dancing, she enters the alternate reality along with other inmates and, in order to steal items in the real world, they must accomplish the mission in the alternate one.
For better or for worse, we never actually see Baby dancing, since we enter the alternate reality with her at the moment she begins each performance.
Their guide within the alternate reality is an old, wrinkled man played by Scott Glenn—essentially, a poor man's David Carradine in "Kill Bill" (a film that "Sucker Punch" clearly borrows from on many levels). Glenn's character, nameless and listed in the credits as the appropriately generic "Wise Man," speaks exclusively in sage-like and vague proverbs, to the point that it actually becomes funny.
If "Sucker Punch" seemed self-aware at all, it could work, but one doesn't get the sense that Snyder or anyone else who worked on this movie saw the film's absurdity. The film is totally convinced of itself, but as far as convincing us, it falls a little bit short.
Emily Browning does a satisfactory job, but her acting style is, to put it nicely, minimalist. Her character doesn't actually utter a line until about 45 minutes into the film, and even after that, she barely speaks. Her job is more to stand there with the camera on her, looking scared, angry or vulnerable and that she does just fine.
There is a lot of blood, but the movie is PG-13, so like Baby's dance moves, much of the gore is suggested off camera rather than explicitly shown.
Snyder jumps back and forth haphazardly from one reality to another, in a way that is admirable in its ambition but awkward in practice. The first time Baby slips from one world to another, it is abrupt and poorly illustrated, and that basically stays constant throughout the film.
"Charlie's Angels" is one of the other numerous films that "Sucker Punch" takes from, as are "Shutter Island," "Moulin Rouge," "Inception," and even "Tron: Legacy." Ultimately, Snyder spends so much time jumping from idea to idea that "Sucker Punch" feels unanchored and indecisive.
Good for the visuals, but I would just watch "Sin City" or "Kill Bill" instead.