Sucker Punch (12A)

Starring: Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Jon Hamm

Here is an action fantasy "born from the creative vision", we are informed, of the director Zack Snyder (Watchmen, 300). I don't doubt that Mr Snyder is possessed of an imagination; it's just that what he imagines is hackneyed, meretricious and boring.

A teenage girl (Emily Browning) has been packed off to an abusive mental asylum by a hateful stepfather. As a refuge from harrowing reality the girl, "Babydoll", fantasises herself and four girlfriends – all kitted out like a goth night at St Trinian's – into a sequence of chaotic and nonsensical battles with samurais, Orcs and (Snyder's major offence) German soldiers in Second World War trenches. The point seems to be that this is the girls' revenge on leering male tormentors, though once you see the leather-minis-and-eyeliner look of Babydoll and her pals, you begin to wonder on which side of the gender divide its target audience really belongs.