Sucker Punch

I didn't know anything about this movie. I only got to know about it when my buddy and I went out to buy some DVDs, and there was this intense fight scene being shown on a big ass LED TV in the shop. I was like, staring, ogling, just plain hypnotized by the fight sequence and the pretty girls that were lashing it out with hordes of robot gunners.That was my introduction into Sucker Punch, the 2011 action-fantasy movie by Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya.

Its the story of a girl, referred in the movie as 'Babydoll', trying to escape from the asylum , after a bunch of horrible events perpetrated by her stepfather, who was also the one who interred her in the institution. Unbeknownst to her, her stepfather made a deal on the inside that would silence her if further investigation is held about the before mentioned horrible event.

Seems like a simple plot, and it is really, but the twist to the storytelling is that Babydoll moves in and out of her fantasies to help her cope with the events that are unfolding. These fantasies are also metaphors for the missions or tasks Babydoll and her friends had to got through to accomplish their goal of escaping.

Within these fantasies is where the intense fighting sequences takes place. You'll see them face off with enemies and scenarios which is made with an eclectic mix of World War 1 , Medieval Japan, Knights and Orcs, Mecha and Zombie soldiers. All inter layered seamlessly, amidst all that modern firepower, intense melee-type fight scenes, hand to hand combat, and flying around like kungfu masters. Which, by the way, are sooooo awesome!! I never stared in awe at action sequences like this since the first Matrix film.

Its like a fanboy's (or otaku's) fantasy movie where petite-katana-wielding-double-pistol-waving-school girl like uniform wearing vixen faces off not in a girly manner but in a battle that rivals sequences from anime's like 'Basilisk', 'Gundam' and 'Fists of the North Star'.

For me, I could get enough of all the fight sequence, but the story is too depressing. I couldn't help but feel sorry for Babydoll, for all the things she had gone through and will be going through.

But unfortunately, that's all there is to it. A story which could be told differently, or shorter, spiced up with tons of effects and fight scenes. I alone enjoyed parts of the movie while the people I saw it with was lost and appalled with the movie, trying to make sense of it all.

At the end of the movie, my son suddenly cried out, 'What the hell was that? its like an in-flight movie for crazy people....'

I had to pop in a DVD of Disney's 'Cars' just to calm him down.

(my son was surprised to see High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens in a revealing outfit, blasting caps and fighting with axes. I told him, they all had to grow up some time...)