Suicide Squad

I’m gonna be honest, I was one of the few who liked Batman v Superman despite it’s vast amount of flaws and puzzling story choices, and would defend it in a heartbeat, but for the life of me, I don’t think I’ll be able to do the same for this film.

Suicide Squad, the third attempt at making the DC shared movie-verse a thing, follows a group of villains consisting of Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), Slipknot (Adam Beach), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), and *pause to catch breath* Katana (Karen Fukuhara), collectively known as Task Force X, who have one mission and one mission only: take down the newest metahuman threat while trying not to get killed in the process. Being criminals of the worst variety, completing their mission grants the team reduced prison sentences courtesy of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), head of A.R.G.U.S., a military-esque organization based on combating the newest superhuman threats across the globe. As a failsafe in case anyone steps out of line or attempts to make a run for it, Waller injects tiny explosive devices in each member’s necks, destined to go boom the second someone acts up, but with our “heroes” everything but, it becomes not a question of if someone steps out of line, but when. A Suicide Squad indeed.

First things first: this is not a good movie; it just isn’t, plain and simple. Coming from someone who liked BvS and who usually gives superhero movies the benefit of the doubt when they suck or fail to meet expectations (cuz that’s what we hardcore fanboys like to pretend we do), I can barely find a good — not great mind you — thing to say about my entire experience, but I’ll try:

Cameos! Will Smith! Margot Robbie (mostly)! Captain Boomerang (when he was funny)! The few times the script was genuinely entertaining! The soundtrack even though it’s clear that was the only attempt made to “tone shift” anything! That one scene with Deadshot going H.A.M. on the hood of a car! The majority of the first twenty minutes or so!

And that’s about it, no joke.

As for the bad, let’s just say there’s a lot, so let’s start off by talking about the newest take on the iconic role of the Joker (Jared Leto) first. Unlike most people who flipped shit when they first saw what Leto’s Joker looked like, I had faith; it seemed like the filmmakers were going for the crazy, demented, psychotic and utterly insane version of the Joker that has been gracing comic panels as of late, so I reserved judgment until I saw him in action. And then I saw him in action…and I still don’t know what to make of it. It’s not that I don’t like what Leto is doing here, I just don’t think I understand it yet. I really believe there’s a lot of potential in there, especially when he walks the Joker down the scary, deranged serial killer route he managed to dip into from time to time, but what I didn’t like, despised even, was the overly sexual and just plain gross tones he injected into practically every scene. Everything that came out of his mouth revolved around banging Harley or just being uncomfortably weird (as opposed to the Joker’s usual “good” weird). Rumors are swirling that a lot of Leto’s scenes had been cut from the film, scenes that I’m sure rounded out his character a bit more and showcased his performance in a better light, so unless there’s a director’s cut floating around out there, this version of Joker is going to have to go down in cinematic history as just okay until the next solo Batman film gives him the screen time needed to punch up his character and more importantly, deliver a better performance with what I know will be a much more competent script.

This weird, potentially great, yet mostly squandered dealing of one of the most iconic literary characters in history is pretty much how the rest of the movie panned out. The action is just okay, the character work is non-existent unless you’re talking about the forced and cliché emotional beats sprinkled throughout, the story has no point, the villain is bad even by superhero standards, the dialogue is terrible, the script is lazy, and to top it all off, half of the characters in the film don’t even matter, let alone make an impression that warrants them being part of this squad in the first place!

Another quick barrage of exclamation points and short sentences to illustrate my point:

Killer Croc is a bro…he used the word “bruh” and talked like he was next up at the beer pong table! Diablo is the worst stereotypical Latino I’ve seen in recent memory! Katana literally does nothing! Slipknot was a means to an end! Enchantress deserved better! Flag holds the crown as the Exposition King! Lots more that I don’t feel like getting into!

My point is that this is supposed to be a team film, one where we see the dynamic of the group morph and grow from people who could care less about each other to people who have the ability to overcome anything together. Granted, everyone here are in varying states of crazy and probably wouldn’t think twice about murdering each other if they could, but at its core, this is a team and should have been treated as such. Not once, despite the forced emotional beats and the failed attempts at bringing some humanity to these characters, did I give a crap about anything going on. I wasn’t invested in the characters, the story, the action; I wasn’t excited about what would happen next or what had already happened, I was really just waiting for something awesome to come along and blow my mind, but unfortunately nothing ever materialized that warranted more than a passing “meh”.

Smelling yet again of studio involvement that seems to have buried any potential this film might have had, Suicide Squad is an exercise in how to take a pretty awesome idea and run it into the ground. The script feels like a first draft without a purpose and the actors seem to barely have a grasp on their characters before they were stuck in front of the camera. Despite the talent here being quite good, the final product is so off in so many ways that one can only wonder what was really going on behind the scenes. Somehow I still have faith in the DC movie machine but this slapped together and rushed excuse for a movie is really testing my patience.