written and directed by David Ayer
With Batman vs. Superman having left theaters a couple of months ago, it seems film critics were in need of a new whipping boy, and in Warner Brothers' new film Suicide Squad, they have found one. Inspired by the comics of the same name, as well as the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen, the film tells the story of a team of supervillains recruited by the United States government to fight superhuman threats.
Following the events of Batman vs. Superman, high-level government honcho Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) makes a pitch to the highest echelons of the United States government's security apparatus to put together a team of super-powered individuals (referred to here as "metahumans") to serve as a response to future Supermen who might not be as friendly. The twist is that each and every one of the proposed individuals is either a convicted felon or, in one case, a potentially-world ending threat that is extremely difficult to control. This roster includes assassin-for-hire Deadshot (Will Smith), who never misses a shot, psychiatrist-turned-psychotic-criminal Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the girlfriend of notorious criminal the Joker (Jared Leto), East-LA gangbanger Diablo (Jay Hernandez) who can manipulate fire but who, following personal tragedy, is reluctant to use his powers, sewer-dwelling, reptilian human Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnoye-Agbaje), who is super strong and feral, Australian bank robber Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) who is extremely proficient in the use of...well...you know...and finally, the super-powerful but highly unstable Enchantress, an entity thousands of years old that happens to have taken possession of archaeologist June Moone (Cara Delevingne). Enchantress is easily the most dangerous of the group, but Waller is confident she has her under control, because she has her heart in her briefcase. Waller convinces the government to sign off on her plan, and in short order, after a world-ending threat emerges, the team is activated, but under the close watch of Col. Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) a Navy SEAL who also happens to be Dr. Moone's boyfriend and the mysterious Katana (Karen Fukuhara) armed with a sword that steals people's souls. As an extra safety measure, the members of "Task Force X" ("Suicide Squad" is a name thought up by Deadshot) are fitted with explosive devices in their necks lest any of them get any ideas about escaping. Considering the magnitude of the threat, even Waller's motley crew may not be enough to save the day.
Now, does this film deserve the critical thrashing it's been getting over the last couple of days?
Well, no, not to the extent that it's been criticized, but it's far from a perfect movie.
The writing, for one thing, leaves quite a bit to be desired. Not only is Waller's grand plan to have a bunch of extremely dangerous people serve as some kind of deterrent against threats kind of inherently untenable, as the development of the story reveals, but her idea of a "failsafe" in the event her plan goes wrong is basically laughable. While her characterization as Machiavellian and utterly amoral is well-done and, to the best of my recollection, in keeping with the comics, her incompetence rather took me out of the story on more than one occasion. Not only that, but Rick Flagg, supposedly the lone "straight" man in the team as he is the mobile "warden" of the jailbirds, is a thoroughly unlikable character, and while Davis does her best with some really bad scripting, the failings of Flagg are equal parts Ayer (and his presumed ghost-writers) and Kinnaman. Also, the movie suffers some serious internal logic failure as the script cannot seem to decide exactly how fragile or tough the zombie minions against which the team face off are supposed to be. At some times they can take a hail of bullets but at others all it takes is a baseball bat to the head to take them down.
The editing is chaotic, and the sound editing or mixing even worse, as I had to strain to hear a lot of the dialogue over the pop music blaring while it was going on. I get the gripe about there being a "tonal shift" from one scene to another, but it wasn't that jarring for me, though far too often, the bad writing was.
For all that, this film is not the cinematic apocalypse some reviewers make it out to be. The lead performances, for one, are pretty solid, with Will Smith's Deadshot marking a return to action-movie form for him after the disastrous After Earth almost killed his career. Whether the rumors are true that there were re-shoots to make the film "funnier" I can be pretty sure that Smith brought the humor up front, as it has been a defining aspect of his career, really. Ayer wisely anchors the movie on his character, for the most part. Robbie is also a hoot as Quinn, though her somewhat exploitative outfit somewhat undermines the film's aspirations towards subversiveness (more on that later). The scene in which she is "reborn" by jumping into a vat of chemicals at the behest of her beloved Joker, with its mix of candy colors against the white goo, is haunting and quite honestly belongs in a different movie, which is something that, to be fair, can be said for quite a few of the visuals here. One wonders if Ayer's vision wasn't somehow adulterated by meddling suits.
As the fourth onscreen iteration of the Joker (including the one from the 1966 Batman movie), Leto does what he can to make the role his own, and succeeds for the most part, but his participation in the story is quite peripheral. It would be interesting to see him face off against Ben Affleck's Batman (who does show up in flashbacks, incidentally, but only opposite Deadshot and Harley Quinn). Hernandez's Diablo infuses the movie with a little bit of soul, though his arc is more than a little hackneyed. Incidentally, I was happy to see quite a bit of ethnic diversity among the lead actors (you HEAR that, Marvel? Black guys/cultural minorities can be more than SIDEKICKS!), though I will dock WB/DC points on the diversity score for the fact that Native American actor Adam Beach basically showed up just so that Amanda Waller could show the team she wasn't messing around about the neck explosives. That is not a spoiler in any meaningful way.
The action, while uneven and chaotic at some points (again, due to internal logic issues, among other things), is still pretty watchable, and pretty much every team member gets to showcase his or her signature talent once or twice.
I suppose what rankles critics is the notion being peddled by some that this movie is in any way subversive, because really, it's not. It falls quite readily on the "crooks with hearts of gold" story trope, as well as several others, and the fact that Harley Quinn's choice of wardrobe is designed to get male butts into the seats really debunks any notion that this movie is some groundbreaking statement on female empowerment as some people tried to suggest early in the film's marketing phase. It's basically one's average male-centric action movie that follows a fairly standard formula. It's hardly a storytelling maverick.
Fortunately, it's not the creative black hole it's made out to be by critics, and with better writing and editing, a sequel to this could actually be quite entertaining.
It's a decent way to kill time at the mall...but not much else.
6/10
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