Letting out a long sigh as I rub my tired eyes and think back to what I saw over the last two hours. Siiiiiigh. Alright, lets get into this.
DC’s latest film in their fledgling DCEU (DC Extended Universe is what they’re calling their interconnected series of cape flicks) is all about the worst of the worst. The baddest bads coerced into taking part in suicide missions for the good-ish guys. And by worst of the worst, I mean they had characters like Deadshot, Killer Croc, and Captain Boomerang available. (Yeah he uses boomerangs.)
The film starts us off with introductions to the imprisoned Deadshot (Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) before switching gears and bringing us to the big boss pulling the strings of this little operation, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis). Aaaaand then it remembers to drop the title card. What we get next are introductions to Deadshot and Harley Quinn (wait didn’t we just see that?) along with several other members of their team, including the uber-powerful body possessing, Enchantress. (Who looks like she’s channeling that Britney Spears performance where she carried that boa constrictor around on stage.) Alright now we’re introduced to the team and we can start having some fun. OH wait they already kicked off the mandatory blue beam/portal/plot device in the sky? OK guess we’re gonna jump right into the action then as the team needs to sneak into an enemy occupied city and recover a high value asset and…..OH wait lets introduce more members of the team at the last minute! OK now we can get to the plot right? Which was what again? Oh right blue portal beam thingy in the sky. Gotcha. Several CGI faceless grunts and emptied bullet clips later, we get our finale along with a ham-fisted *sniff* emotional moment. The End. Oh plus there’s the Joker somewhere along the way too.
What the hell happened while making this movie? I wanna blame the forced recuts and edits made by Warner Bros and DC after the backlash from BvS. But even with the haphazard editing job done on this, the story was really dumb. Like really really dumb. And not fun mindless action dumb but lazy thoughtless dumb. David Ayer who wrote and directed this just missed the mark nearly completely it seems. As for the cast, they range from meh to actually pretty great. I would put the meh on Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, the leader of the group, Will Smith is back in charismatic quip mode as the assassin Deadshot and he does a good job at it but the actually pretty great has to go to Margot Robbie who in moments here and there absolutely nails it as Harley Quinn. Oh but then there’s our new Joker, played by Jared Leto. Honestly he is so much an afterthought in this movie that I can’t really give a solid opinion on his take of the classic villain yet. Well I suppose if I had to say anything, its that his take on the character came off as slimey. Just unpleasant to watch. Unlike other renditions of the character where you wanted to keep your eyes fixed to the screen, after this Joker was on screen I really just wanted to wipe the screen with some Purell.
Honestly I wanted to find likable things in this film but it’s just too much of a mess. The plot is incredibly phoned in. The editing is distracting. For the most part, the characters never feel like they come together as a team. The whole affair was just one long test of my patience. At one point in the film, Amanda Waller explains how she caught the bad guys and buried them deep in a hole and then buried that hole. An argument could be made for “Suicide Squad” to share that fate.
(Like the idea of bad guys voluntold to go on suicide missions and want to see a DC movie that handled it well? Check out “Batman: Assault on Arkham”. It’s part of their animated straight to DVD films and it’s everything “Suicide Squad” could have been.)
