Two years ago, Marvel Studios gave us a movie starring a gang of morally-ambiguous misfits that, in the realm of the comic books they originated from, were D-list characters at best. So when Guardians of the Galaxy turned out to be a big fat hit at the box office, DC Comics decided that when it came time for them to create their own cinematic universe, they'd do something similar...
Cue the Suicide Squad. The group initially appeared in 1959 as a team of elite commandos taking on dangerous missions following the disbanding of the Justice Society, but the concept was completely reimagined by writer/artist John Ostrander in 1987. Drawing inspiration from The Dirty Dozen, Ostrander revived the Suicide Squad as a covert ops team with a revolving roster of minor villains wrangled into the group. The Suicide Squad has made a number of off-and-on appearances in the comics ever since, and eventually popping up in animation, video games, and now their own live-action movie. And folks, if you thought that was Batman v Superman was bad, you're probably not gonna like Suicide Squad very much either.
The death of Superman has shocked the world. It's also left its political leaders with an unshakable sense of dread. Superman may have been one of the good guys, but what would happen if another being with similar abilities decided he wanted to be a villain instead? To combat this, government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has convinced the CIA to sign off on a project she's conceived called "Task Force X." The project would see a number of dangerous criminals cobbled together and sent into black-ops missions with the promise of reduced prison sentences and extra perks during their stay in jail. And if things go south or someone goes rogue, that's where plausible deniability comes in.
The team is placed under the command of Special Forces member Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and expert swordswoman Katana (Karen Fukuhara), and all it needs are a few lucky recruits. And for her merry band of misfits, Waller has assembled...
- Deadshot (Will Smith), the world's deadliest assassin
- Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former prison psychiatrist who became a mentally-disturbed loose cannon after being seduced by one of her patients, the notorious Joker (Jaret Leto)
- Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an Australian bank robber whose nickname comes from his preferred weapon of choice
- El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), an ex-gangbanger who can summon and control fire
- Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who was born with an incredibly rare genetic condition that has made him into a reptilian beast
- Slipknot (Adam Beach), a mercenary whose specialty lies in the use of ropes and grappling hooks
- Dr. June Moone (Cara Delevigne), a meek archaeologist whose body hosts the spirit of an ancient and powerful sorceress known as "the Enhantress"
Things take an immediate turn south, however, when Enchantress takes full control of June's body and decides that if humanity will no longer worship her as they did millennia ago, they must be exterminated. She awakens her brother, the demonic Incubus (Alain Chanoine), and the duo begin building a mystical weapon with which they will accomplish their ultimate goal. Waller deploys Task Force X to the city that Enchantress and Incubus are occupying with orders to extract a high-profile target, but standing in their way are two pissed-off godlike beings and a bunch of creatures under their control.
I wanted to like Suicide Squad. I desperately wanted to walk out of that theater and write a rave review where I'd tell you to run to the nearest theater and see it as soon as you possibly could because Suicide Squad is the coolest movie ever. But I'm unable to do so. The truth of the matter is that Suicide Squad is kinda weak, to be honest with you. As I implied in the introduction, one gets the feeling that Warner Bros. and DC Comics saw the success of Guardians of the Galaxy and chose to make their own version, right down to having a bunch of classic rock and pop songs on the soundtrack. But Suicide Squad has none of the charm or heart that made Guardians so much fun. The direction is lazy, the plot is hokey, the characterizations are wafer-thin, and the whole thing is just plain unappealing.
Writer/director David Ayer is no stranger to action movies, having worked on quite a few over the last few years. You'd think he'd have plenty of experience in making them, but he left Suicide Squad lacking. It feels like some generic, low-budget flick that would've gone straight to DVD and ended up in the $5 discount bin at Walmart within a year, not a summer blockbuster starring a bunch of DC Comics characters. It doesn't help that the movie's schizophrenic pacing puts it all over the place, never letting it establish any sort of consistent flow. It's hard for a movie to get into any real groove when it feels like it's been edited with a chainsaw.
Ayer's script also leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. A lot of the dialogue is hokey and hackneyed (Rick Flag's exposition and introductions of Katana and Slipknot stand out in particular), while other parts try so desperately to sound cool when they're corny almost to the point of being laughable. Take, for example, when Harley comments "that's a killer app!" when Flag remotely detonates one of the explosive collars that Task Force X wear, or when Deadshot tells Harley to "stay evil, dollface" after the two come to an agreement about their fates. If lines like these are supposed to be jokes, they aren't very funny. If they're supposed to be serious, then they just sound lame.
The characters are also almost all one-note caricatures, with any sort of development being slim to nil. You can make a movie about villains and antiheroes and give them some depth, but it seems Ayer couldn't be bothered with that. The characters only seem to exist to go from action scene to action scene while making cute little quips every so often, and that's it.
The movie also suffers from having some extremely weak villains. Enchantress is an absolutely boring villain, and Incubus is even worse than that. The Suicide Squad themselves might be relatively flat, but that's more than I can say for Enchantress and Incubus. They're sub-generic baddies who are only there as an excuse to bring our protagonists together. Enhantress and Incubus also suffer because the digital effects used to create them is ridiculously dodgy. Cara Delevigne's live-action face looks really awkward on a badly animated CGI body, while Incubus doesn't even remotely look realistic (especially during his fight with El Diablo during the climax). I've heard the movie cost $170 million to make, and if that's the case, couldn't they have funneled a little more towards the digital effects budget?
A talented cast could probably elevate mediocre material, but the majority of the cast barely register at a level I'd call "okay, I guess." Jai Courtney has some funny moments as the sleazy Captain Boomerang, but the best among the cast are Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Smith and Robbie are a lot of fun as Deadshot and Harley (even in spite of the occasional dodgy bits of dialogue I mentioned earlier), so much so that I'd say this whole slog of a movie is worth sitting through just for them.
But I'd gladly take actors phoning in their performances over the utter shitshow that is Jared Leto as Joker. The garish costumes, metal teeth, and the stupid tattoos on his face are bad enough, but Leto is laughably bad in the role. Every second he's on the screen, you can't help but wonder just what the hell he was thinking. And for that matter, what the hell was Ayer thinking when he let Leto carry on with this utterly ridiculous, unlikable performance. This was really the best he could get out of Leto? I get that the actors who've played Joker in the past have all been beloved and iconic in their own ways, and that Leto probably wanted to go in his own direction with the character. But he's just so awful here that he becomes memorable for all the wrong reasons.
If Batman v Superman wasn't enough of a sign, then Suicide Squad is further proof that Warner Bros. is so focused on the billions of dollars that Marvel Studios and the Avengers are making in that they're ignoring why those movies are so successful. Suicide Squad itself is just an absolute mess of a movie. A poor script, lackluster direction, and barely above-average acting make it an absolute trainwreck from start to finish. It's slightly better than Batman v Superman, but that's just damning it with faint praise. I'd only really recommend seeing it if you absolutely have to see every single comic book movie that comes out of Hollywood. You otherwise aren't missing a lot otherwise, and you'd probably better off waiting for it to turn up on Netflix or HBO. It's just another stumbling block for Warner Bros. and DC as they attempt to catch up to their competition, and I really hate to say that/
Final Rating: **
