I've never thought of director Zack Snyder ("300", "Watchmen") as an experimental filmmaker, but his latest, "Sucker Punch" (Japan title: "Angel Wars"), seems like some sort of conceptual art prank. The experiment seems to have been as follows: Send some staff to San Diego's Comic-Con, survey 100 random fanboys as to what they think is "cool", and then attempt to stuff all that crap into one film.
Thus, "Sucker Punch" features not only sexy serafuku schoolgirls with samurai swords and gas mask-clad zombie German storm troopers, but fire-breathing dragons, giant robotic battle armor, wisdom-dispensing sages, snarling orcs, lingerie-clad bordello babes, monstrously phallic machine guns and, of course, French maid-costumed girls on their knees. It's the triple-chocolate-chunk ice cream of geek movies.
The problem, of course, is how to get all this stuff in there with a plot that makes some sort of sense. The answer: Don't even bother. Snyder, fashioning a Russian doll of fantasies within fantasies, simply skips along from one action sequence to the next, with the flimsiest of plot lines to hang them on. The resulting film plays like some sort of demented mash-up of "Kill Bill" and "Burlesque," with nods to "Shock Corridor", "Brazil" and a generation's worth of video games such as "Killzone."