EMILY BROWNING AND ABBIE CORNISH

Princesses Of Punch

Zack Snyder’s last visceral slice of insanity is like an adolescent’s wet dream. The 300 and Watchmen director has a well-known penchant for slow-mo action and saturated visuals, and his first original project – Sucker Punch – is no exception.

Drawing on video game iconography and structure without overtly announcing it, the film tells the story of Babydoll, a young woman plotting to escape a gothic asylum in the 1960s after being incarcerated by her nasty step-father. Staving off a scheduled lobotomy, she devises a method of escape that recalls both Inception’s dream-within-a-dream theatrics and Japanese anime. These flights of fancy take her first to the sleazy world of a bordello, then later into combat with giant samurai, steampunk World War I soldiers, dragons and slinky robots.

If anyone could pull off this excessive madness, it was Snyder, but what surprised Emily Browning (who plays Babydoll and is now all grown up following her 2004-turn in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) was the touch he had with the story.

“I always trusted Zack in terms of visuals even before we started filming, and I wondered how he was going to be on a personal level as a director, and he was amazing,” she enthuses, “I mean, he was so open to as much rehearsals as we needed. He wanted to talk about the development of the characters as much as we wanted to. He was really open to collaboration in terms of creating the emotional storyline for all of the characters.”

Those characters are Babydoll’s partners in crime: the impulsive Rocket (Jena Malone), the not-blonde Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), the machine-hog Amber (Jamie Chung), and the physically imposing Sweet Pea, who is played stalwartly by Browning’s fellow-Aussie, Abbie Cornish. Sweet Pea is the senior figure of the group, the one who is initially reluctant at the dangers of Babydoll’s fanciful escape plan.

Says Cornish, “For me it was the journey of someone who was suppressed, someone who was surviving, someone who had put all the fragile parts of her, the sensitive parts of her deep down, locked away where no-one could get them, and then to let that bird out of the cage, to let that be free and journey into the light.”

To prepare for their roles, the actresses went through an intensive boot camp involving mixed martial arts, gun training, and weight training with the Navy Seals. They worked six to eight hours a day for three months prior to the Vancouver shoot.

It was all in the name of female empowerment – one complete with sexy leather corsets, swords and M4-carbine rifles. It was this feminism angle that was a big draw for the film’s young stars. “I think the sisterhood in the movie is really strong. Even if they come from vulnerable places, every girl has a moment when she finds herself in the film – finds her strength and individuality – I think that’s important for young people to see,” says Cornish.

Browning agrees: “They’re being oppressed to some degree, but I think the whole idea of the film is them breaking free, and learning to fight against that, and finding their own freedom in their mind, finding their own strength, and sacrificing things for people that they love. So I actually find that an amazing, cool and empowering message for girls.”

_JOSHUA BLACKMAN