Sucker Punch (2011)

Sucker Punch is a 2011 action fantasy film, directed by Zack Snyder and co-written by him and Steve Shibuya. It is Snyder's first film based on an original script. The film stars Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, and Carla Gugino. The storyline follows the fantasies of a young woman who is committed to a mental institution, as she makes a plan to escape the hospital before suffering a lobotomy.
The film was released in both conventional and IMAX theatres in the United States at midnight on March 25, 2011.

Plot: In the 1960s, a 20-year-old girl nicknamed "Babydoll" (Emily Browning) is institutionalized by her widowed stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) at the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane after she is blamed for the death of her younger sister. The stepfather bribes Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac), one of the asylum's orderlies, into forging the signature of the asylum's psychiatrist, Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino), to have Babydoll lobotomized so she cannot inform the authorities of the true circumstances leading to her sister's death. During her admission to the institution, Babydoll takes note of four items that she would need to attempt an escape.

During her time in the asylum, Babydoll retreats into a fantasy world in which she is newly arrived in a brothel owned by Blue, whom she envisions as a mobster. She befriends four other dancers – Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Rocket (Jena Malone), and Rocket's sister, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish). Dr. Gorski is envisioned as the girls' dance instructor. Blue informs Babydoll that her virginity will be sold to a client known as "The High Roller" (Jon Hamm). The "High Roller" is actually the doctor scheduled to perform the lobotomy. Gorski encourages Babydoll to perform an erotic dance, during which Babydoll fantasizes she's in feudal Japan, meeting the Wise Man (Scott Glenn). After she expresses her desire to "escape", the Wise Man presents Babydoll with weapons and tells her that she would need to collect five items: a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a fifth, unrevealed item that would require "a deep sacrifice". She then fights three samurai giants. As her fantasy ends, she finds herself back in the brothel, her dance impressing Blue and other onlookers.


Babydoll convinces her friends to prepare an escape. She plans to use her dances as a distraction while the other girls obtain the necessary tools. During her dances, she imagines adventures that mirror the escape efforts. These adventures include infiltrating a bunker protected by steampunk World War I German soldiers to gain a map (mirrored by Sweet Pea copying a map of the brothel/institution from Blue's office); storming an Orc-infested castle to cut two fire-producing crystals from the throat of a baby dragon (mirrored by Amber stealing a lighter from the mayor's pocket); and boarding a train and combating mechanized guards to disarm a bomb (mirrored by stealing a kitchen knife from the cook's belt). During the last fantasy, Rocket sacrifices herself to save Sweet Pea and is killed when the bomb detonates, which is paralleled by the cook fatally stabbing Rocket while she's trying to protect her sister.