Movie Review: Suicide Squad

The third film in the DCEU, Suicide Squad is a loud, colourful and chaotic film, but inside that film is a low key, down and dirty rescue mission film. Therein lays the first issue, the film seems to be fighting against itself. It seems as though David Ayer wanted to go one way, whilst the studio was pulling him the other way. The resulting tone of the film is one that is difficult to access.

The film starts off with an introduction to the Suicide Squad, in various situations, told through flashbacks via Amanda Waller (a tough as nails Viola Davis), which is choppy, but I understand that the squad haven’t had their own films or been featured in any films beforehand. Waller introduces the idea of the squad as way of defending the world if the next Superman or Meta-human is a terrorist. From here we get the rogues gallery Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, and Killer Croc. Then we get a wildcard character in The Enchantress/Dr June Moone – a character that looks awesome, could be awesome, but is chronically under used. Rick Flagg is introduced, as is his bodyguard Katana, and almost immediately the team is thrown together on a rescue mission.First off – Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis and Jay Hernandez run this film. Without them, the film would fail on every level. This group of actors hold the film together with great performances either nuanced (Hernandez – who I’d really like to see his character get explored more) or nutty (Robbie), but always with the hint of why underneath the surface, especially in the case of Smith and Davis. Both characters have vastly different motivations, but both are conveyed despite any script shortcomings. Cara Delevingne is fine as Dr. June Moone, but hopelessly out of her depth as The Enchantress. She isn’t helped by a total lack of things to do. A lot of pages (and anxious fanboy hand wringing) were devoted to Jared Leto’s take on The Joker. Two things – one is that he does fine, presenting The Joker as a wild anarchist as opposed to Ledger’s Joker who liked to plan his chaos and the second thing is that he isn’t in the film very much. Whether by design or that his backstory ended up being truncated (which I suspect is the case), his insertion into the story isn’t necessary to plot, with the exception that wherever Harley is The Joker is never far away (which I’m fine with, by the way).

Ayer directs the film well and he pulls off some great looking shots, but as previously mentioned, the film is framed as one type of film, but presented as another and the two don’t mix well. It ends up stuck between the two and will end up pleasing no one. The script suffers as well, perhaps by studio interference, as it almost seemed like you could see the notes from the studio – Make it more funny, more zany – clearly that is what they wanted by cutting the trailers the way they did, whereas the trailers did the film a huge disservice. The film is fun, but not funny. Any one liners in the trailers are basically the only one liners in the film, so it completely deadens any impact they would’ve made. The big evil bad guy is awful. A CGI gigantic thing that has no motivation beyond ‘kill all humans’ – there is no emotional beat to him, just nothing – he is a straight out bad guy. The films bad guy henchman are no different from the faceless bad guys in The Avengers or GotG, they are just there for cannon fodder.

The film is ultimately disappointing despite having some very entertaining and great moments that I wish were expanded upon. The time has come for Warner Bros to start trusting their directors and stop listening to social media and commentators and just do their own thing. If they want to go dark, then so be it. Some people will like it, some won’t. If they want to go the wise cracking comedy route, then so be it, but they have to come to these decisions on their own. Say what you will about BvS, but the longer cut was clearly the best one and yet WB cut it down so the theatrical version made little sense and I can almost guarantee that Ayer would have a vastly different cut of this film. I like that they went out on a limb to make a film about the ‘bad guys’ but they then seemed afraid to give the characters any room to move. You can’t ever please everyone and if you try – you end up pleasing no one.

Ryan Morrissey-Smith