Just when you thought the DC movieverse couldn't sink any lower, here comes its dumbest movie yet.
Suicide Squad is a film of fits and starts, and way too many flashbacks that kill all narrative momentum just whenever its attempting to come together, underscoring just how ramshackle its editing is. Imagine if you will, the team is about to go face the big bad, and then suddenly, for reasons that are only marginally clear, they all opt to go to the bar instead. In a way, I can see how that might work, given that this is a crew of bad guys; but the scene is so gracelessly plunked in the middle of the third act that I thought perhaps I was having a fever dream, a 15 minute interminable fever dream that ALSO finds the time to include a flashback! Or better yet, there's a moment where the film decides to display what I assume is supposed to be a twist of some kind, or at least it felt that way based on how the scene is written, but it simply flashes back to an earlier moment in the movie that was already explicitly shown to the audience! You can't make this stuff up!
There are also quite a few elements in Ayer's script that come across fairly uncomfortably. There are far too many references to hitting women than are necessary, and of course Harley is on display throughout, with Ayer's camera ogling her body at every instance it can. I know many found Lois' bathtub scene in Batman v Superman to be problematic, but this is a bit beyond the pale in terms of objectifying content. Then there is Enchantress, who is displayed in what is best described as a "Slave Leia bikini" and the costume you've seen in promo material is actually the more covered up outfit. As she gains power, she somehow loses more clothing!
Between the questionable decisions, and an overstuffed, convoluted structure, is there anything to recommend about Suicide Squad? If so, it begins and ends with Smith, Robbie, and Davis. Smith as Deadshot gets every possible opportunity to display just why he was/is considered one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. His Deadshot is both capable, charming, and is easily the funniest part of the film. It's been reported that some of his dialogue was improvised and given how much uproariously more hilarious his lines were than some of his more stilted "this is funny, right?" counterparts were, I can believe it. Additionally, Robbie is about as perfect a Harley Quinn as you'll find, with just the right amount of irreverence and loopiness, and utilizing her same New York accent that she employed in The Wolf of Wall Street, but finding just enough Arleen Sorken there to make it all her own. She's terrific, as is Viola Davis, who, to put it bluntly, IS Amanda Waller, carrying the exact kind of steely-eyed terrifying, take no bullshit demeanor that you'd come to expect from the character. You couldn't do any better than these three standouts, and even Jai Courtney makes for a pretty strong Digger Harkness (words I NEVER thought I'd say), but the plodding and utterly mindless goings on of the plot fail them completely as the running time rolls on.
You'll notice I haven't even made mention of Jared Leto's much discussed grilled and tattooed Joker. I haven't forgotten him, he just barely makes a blip here and probably has about a grand total of 10 minutes of screen time. He's not bad, especially in small doses where his rather over the top shtick would likely begin to grate, but he's also just another distraction that could be plucked from the film entirely and not much would be lost. We'd certainly get less distracting flashbacks that way, but as negatives go on this one, Leto doesn't even crack the top ten (El Diablo and Killer Croc are far more awful, and Croc looks like crap). And surprisingly, the Harley-Joker relationship, though given some confounding backstory for the uninitiated, at least seems somewhat genuine and not so one- sided for once.
As bad as any movie released in 2016.
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