Sucker Punch (Extended Cut)

For a film filled with almost nothing but young women dressed in various examples of fetish wear, Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch goes out of its way to needle viewers who expect an uninterrupted leer. Snyder's 2011 release, co-written with Steve Shibuya, tells the tale of Emily Browning's Babydoll, a waif committed to a mouldering mental institution following the death of her mother and the murder of her little sister by a salivating Stepfather. Hoping to net himself his ward's inheritance, this ogre schedules Babydoll for a lobotomy, bribing Oscar Isaac's hunched orderly to forge the necessary documents. Trapped and bereaved, Babydoll begins to disassociate from her grim surroundings, imagining herself first as a virginal prize in a burlesque brothel then as a sword-wielding hero, crashing through waves of mechanical, masculine, aggressors.

Seen here in an extended cut that runs eighteen minutes longer than the theatrical presentation, this home video re-issue restores a level of bite that the American ratings board felt strayed beyond the remit of the PG-13 certificate. One long song and dance sequence aside, the majority of these version longue additions are the opposite of titillation. Instead we have harsh, threatening moments or bitter dialogue tweaks that underline the lack of actual, real-world, power these dozing superheroines possess. The manipulative rhetoric of Isaac's Blue, elevated from creepy hospital attendant to a glittering mobster in Babydoll's delusions, strikes a nastier chord in this edit. The mealy-mouthed platitudes of an unsuccessful pimp are subbed out for statements that anchor his desire for these women in something genuinely sinister. He wants to dominate them; to hurt them and have them love him in spite of this violence. 

With days left before her frontal lobe is rendered dull, Babydoll enlists the other inmates to mount an escape, determining a list of keys that must be acquired - simple items like a kitchen knife or a lighter. These objects, lent scale by the sheer desperation felt by these women, are magnified into incredible treasures that form the basis of action interludes that break with an otherwise impoverished existence. Babydoll has something of the siren about her, able to command male attention then generate enormous, impenetrable, fictions with nothing but a listless swaying. The asylum's men are enraptured, their brains numbed, allowing Babydoll and her accomplices - Jena Malone's Rocket, Vanessa Hudgens' Blondie, Jamie Chung's Amber and Abbie Cornish's Sweet Pea - to slip away to their battlegrounds. Unencumbered by reality, Snyder is able to motor through his varied and fantastical influences, matching flying fortresses against dragons or firing schoolgirl assassins at undead, steam-powered Alleyman. Sucker Punch is a melting pot massacre; Métal hurlant by way of the copyright flouting Daicon Opening Animation shorts.