Suicide Squad Movie Review (Spoiler Free)
The third installment of the DCEU sees a group of infamous DC villains take on the role of heroes. But can it compete with Marvel movies a-la Guardians of the Galaxy?
Genre: Action / Fantasy / Mystery
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje,Cara Delevingne, Jared Leto & Karen Fukuhara.
Run Time: 123 min.
US Release: 01 August 2016
UK Release: 05 August 2016
German Release: 18 August 2016
The short answer is: No, it can’t. While BvS isn’t exactly the hit I was hoping it would be, it still managed to entertain the hell out me and all the negative reviews it obtained seriously surprised me. After BvS, when the first official trailer for Suicide Squad hit the net, I was hoping for this to be the movie that would finally catapult the DCEU into the “Hall of Greatness”. Before managing to finally watch it in theatres, I tried to ignore all of the reviews that were already out and those that I wasn’t able to ignore, I took with a grain of salt. By the end of my visit to the cinema, however, I realised that the critiques were justified, as this is the opposite of great. Suicide Squad has an immense amount of issues, all of which I will go through in detail. So prepare for a rant!
As stated in my previous reviews for Batman v Superman and Man of Steel, I am a big fan of the Dark Knight and other DC characters and collected nearly every issue that came out when I was a child. Most of my old comics are sadly no more, but I still collect Batman issues and have them carefully placed on a shelf. So when I heard that Harley Quinn would be included in... what is her first silver screen appearance, my nerdy heart nearly jumped out of my chest! I am also a fan of the Suicide Squad storyline because it sets up a group of villains and gives them more depth in personality than in a standard superhero issue, showing the reader that there is more to those characters than simply being bad.
So what is this movie about? Basically, after the events of Batman v Superman, ARGUS (a spy agency in the DC Universe) agent Amanda Waller (Davis) convinces the Chiefs of Staff that the US needs a Team of extraordinary beings to the protect the Nation's interest. She gets permission to create a squad, consisting completely of villains that should protect the public and government from meta-human attacks, acting against their self-interests.
The team she picks consists of Deadshot (Smith), Harley Quinn (Robbie), Captain Boomerang (Courtney), Diablo (Hernandez) and Killer Croc (Akinnuoye-Agbaje). They are all forced to obey and are guided by Squad leader Rick Flag (Kinnaman) and his girlfriend June Moone (Delevingne) aka Enchantress. In the meantime The Joker (Letto) is searching for Harley, to break her out of the Squad. When a super-powered and magical force attacks Earth, these villains need to unite and put their differences aside in order to survive.
With a storyline line like the one from Suicide Squad, the best course for Warner Bros. would have been to make an R-rated comic book flick! It worked with Deadpool and it would have helped this movie because the squad is fouled mouthed and violent. But it wasn’t the rating system that harmed the film; the issue with Suicide Squad is that it has no real depth in the plot, able to catch the audience’s interest. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it has no plot at all. All of the jokes, all of the fun and action packed scenes had been shown in the trailer and if someone would asked me to summarise the story, I would probably say that it is simply an expansion of what you already saw in that two-minute trailer.
Little of this movie has any really value and there are nearly no moments I could cherished. The role of the Joker in this film is a joke (pun intended…); he is barely in the film and while they give us flashbacks that are supposed to flesh out the characters a little more, those recaps contain no depth and were thus useless. The dialogues are flat, the menace consists of a bright magical thing in the sky and the ending is a sleazy cop out. There are signs throughout this blockbusters that this should have been a completely different type of film, but somewhere along post-production, someone decided to butcher it completely.
Margot Robbie is by far the best thing in this film and surprised me as Harley Quinn. She is the most compelling character, is funny and beautiful too look at. Her craziness and the interaction with the Joker are my favourite parts of this adaptation. Sadly these moments are down to a minimum. On the other hand, I am somewhat disappointed by Jared Letto’s Joker, who resembles more a thieving pimp than the clown prince of crime from comic lore. I am not saying that Letto does a bad job, he simply isn’t in the movie as much as it was announced he would be, and the few moments with him did not do any justice to this infamous villain!
Will Smith is good as Deadshot but he is, as usual, playing himself who plays another character. It is hard to imagine him being the world's most accurate marksman. Still, his background story gives him depth and proves that he is more than just a merc for hire. Then there is Kinnaman as Rick Flag, who I can't take serious in the role. He gives off such a poor and one-dimensional impression; I was absolutely surprised that he even got cast.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc is completely wasted. He is used as a simple side character, with nearly no lines, tagging along and fighting when necessary. Most of the time it feels as if he was playing the sidekick to Captain Boomerang, Harley or Deadshot. Jay Courtney is the biggest surprise in this blockbuster! He is funny, a little nuts and simply ruthless as Captain Boomerang. I will not say much about Cara Delevingne’s Enchantress, except that she is boring and shallow.
Even the cinematography is a complete mess. Granted, the movie has some good-looking action scenes and stunts but overall, it feels like an extended trailer because of all the rough post-production cuts. These are extremely easy to spot and hamper the flow of the shallow story. It is evidently clear that the studio messed with the final product and the viewer did not obtain the intended movie that Ayer had shot.
Music can be such an important factor to a film. If the correct music is chosen or composed, it can elevate a film into greatness. It also works vice-versa; a scene or moment can be completely ruined if the wrong soundtrack is added to it. So it goes without saying that the music is probably my biggest grudge because it simply does not fit the tone of the comic book flick.
Verdict: So, in a nutshell… Suicide Squad does have its fun moments and a good amount of action, but it isn’t the movie these characters deserved. There is a complete lack of story, the Joker has a minimal amount of screen time and the characters are not explored enough for the viewer to care. The cutting is goddamn awful and the music has been put together in the last minute. Simply said, this movie is a mess and I did expect much better from David Ayer! I will buy it on Blu-ray when it comes out simply because I am a completionist, but I can’t recommend anyone to watch it in theatres. I will give Suicide Squad a generous 5 out of 10!
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