Suck­er Punch

Those who have seen Suck­er Punch’s trail­er, or indeed Zack Snyder’s pre­vi­ous slow-mo action offer­ing, 300, may not have high hopes for his lat­est – but this aston­ish­ing trav­es­ty man­ages to lim­bo under the low­est of low expec­ta­tions. An intense­ly cyn­i­cal mash-up of a movie, Suck­er Punch is acute­ly trou­bling and about as empow­ered as a late night lap dance.

It opens in music video mode with our protagonist’s vio­lent, sex­u­al­ly abu­sive back-sto­ry and new­ly orphaned sta­tus cur­so­ri­ly and cal­lous­ly impart­ed. After an alter­ca­tion with her step-father, dur­ing which her younger sis­ter is killed, our – as yet unnamed – pro­tag­o­nist (Emi­ly Brown­ing) is interned in a for­mi­da­ble Ver­mont men­tal insti­tu­tion called Lennox House.

Faced with the threat of lobot­o­mi­sa­tion, we see her appar­ent­ly retreat into fan­ta­sy, inex­plic­a­bly reimag­in­ing her sur­round­ings as a sleazy, high-secu­ri­ty broth­el where smoky-eyed gamines are forced to ​‘enter­tain’ the clients of their boss and mas­ter, Blue (Oscar Isaac).

New­ly-monikered dancer-cum-hook­er Baby­doll turns out to be a sur­pris­ing­ly sedi­tious inmate – sur­pris­ing not least because Browning’s per­for­mance betrays not one ounce of rebel­lious spark. She for­mu­lates a spec­tac­u­lar­ly half-baked escape plan, assist­ed by a clutch of her fel­low cap­tives, includ­ing Sweet Pea (Abbie Cor­nish) and Rock­et (Jena Malone).

Each time Baby­doll per­forms her sig­na­ture dance she retreats deep­er into fan­ta­sy where the girls do sus­pense-free, tedious bat­tle against a suc­ces­sion of off-the-shelf CG vil­lains: zom­bie Nazis; drag­ons; robots; samu­rais. Back in ​‘Broth­el World’ these (unseen) dances are appar­ent­ly the most erot­ic and mes­meris­ing gyra­tions imag­in­able and so facil­i­tate her co-plot­ters’ theft of the items required for their escape. Daft doesn’t even begin to cov­er it.

The omnipresent and often realised threat of sex­u­al vio­lence is set to a series of pump­ing (and pre­dictable) tunes. It’s a film which asks you bemoan the girls’ sub­jec­tion and impris­on­ment whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly leer­ing at them. The fact that this is a main­stream effort, neat­ly served up with­in the film’s 12A cer­tifi­cate is deeply unset­tling – this is glam­or­ised sex­u­al servi­tude pre­sent­ed as fun for the whole family.

Suck­er Punch is Snyder’s first attempt at devel­op­ing mate­r­i­al from scratch and, as the co-writer and direc­tor, it’s impos­si­ble not to lay the blame square­ly at his door.

It’s hard to feel any­thing but sym­pa­thy for the actors when the mate­r­i­al is so obnox­ious and anaemic; that the won­der­ful Abbie Cor­nish and Jon Hamm are present – albeit in body only – serves as a con­stant reminder that you could be watch­ing some­thing better.

Its aggres­sive, expen­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paign will ensure bums-on-seats, but don’t make the mis­take of mak­ing them yours. Snyder’s first orig­i­nal film is a stinker of such grandiose pro­por­tions that it will take weeks to get rid of its stub­born, wretched odour.