Sucker Punch Movie Review

I went and saw Sucker Punch last night. I’ve been anxious to see this movie since the very first trailer came out. From the trailers, one is lead to believe it has everything an action film fan could ever want: Explosions, machine guns, scantily clad uber-hot chicks, samurai sword fights, aerial combat, evil robots, more explosions, dragons, did I mention scantily-clad uber-hot chicks? If this is what you spent your hard-earned money to see then you absolutely, positively will not be disappointed.

I’ve read several reviews of this film and none of the other reviewers liked it. Few could muster up a single good thing to say about it. Did they see the trailer before going to the film? What did they expect to find with this film? Did they buy tickets for The King’s Speech and accidentally walk into the wrong theater? One reviewer said this movie is the first case of a movie based on a video game without the benefit of a video game. A movie based on a comic book without the benefit of a comic book. Huh? What an idiot. He's pissed because the movie is original?

Again, my argument of “what did you expect” throws all of their reviews out the window. This movie is not like Armageddon at all so don’t get confused when I say that it suffers from the same type of reviewing that Armageddon received. Critics went to it knowing full well what it was going to be and reviewed it like it should have been Gone With the Wind. That’s like me reviewing The Fighter and criticizing it for not having enough explosions in it. Damn that Mark Wahlberg for not blowing enough stuff up in The Fighter.

The movie was awesome. It was violent throughout, but the only disturbing part was the opening sequence. The rest of the action sequences were stylistic with sweeping, visually-stunning landscapes. It wasn’t enough to mix genres throughout the movie. The individual action sequences were a hybrid of different eras and places. It was no surprise to see a Vietnam War US helicopter, flying around a futuristic landscape chasing after a hover-train full of evil robots while multiple planets loom larger than our moon in the night sky. Or World War I trench warfare being carried out with steam-powered reanimated corpses and automatic weapons with laser sights.

The music was modernized covers of Led Zeppelin, Eurythmics, The Beatles, Queen and others. All were very well done and added to the overall “mixing” of time and place theme of the whole movie. The acting was good, maybe not great, but good. The main characters “Baby Doll”, “Sweet Pea”, “Rocket” (my personal favorite), “Blondie” (who was brunette – how cool is that), and “Amber” were interesting without a lot of time wasted on typical cinematic trappings such as “character development” or “back-story”. Who cares, they were uber-hot, half naked and total bad-asses!!!!


The show was completely stolen by Scott Glenn. His character “Wise Man” (ya gotta dig these uncomplicated names dude) acted as a guide to the girls as they worked their way through a series of challenges each designed to take them one step further to their goal which was freedom from the hell in which they had found themselves trapped in. Popping up here and there to give instructions, guidance and a taste of folksy wisdom just for flavor, the “Wise Man” was simply awesome. I’ve always liked Scott Glenn, but this was indeed the best role of his life.

If you want more realistic Sci-Fi action I guess you should go see Battle LA, if you want better acting, screenwriting, character development, blah blah blah, yawn, go see The King’s Speech or The Fighter. But if you’re in the mood to have your world totally rocked, your engine totally revved and your life forever sucker-punched then run, don’t walk, run to go see Sucker Punch!!!!!!!! I give it 4 stars, because it was only PG-13 and therefore did not have the requisite gore and nudity required to make this a perfect action movie!!!