Suicide Squad [M]

“What happens if the next Superman turns out to be a terrorist?” There has been so much hype surrounding Suicide Squad; ooh yay a dark, Nolan-esque movie where most notable villainous characters are called on to save the world, what could possibly go wrong? Turns out, a fair bit. At the end of it all, this movie is just boring, boring, boorrr-ringgg! Warner Bros. needs to release DC films back into the market and let other studios have a crack at them because obviously this agenda to catch up to Marvel with the Justice League out to go against the Avengers is its own doomed mission. So much so that Ryan Reynolds apparently turned up to the premiere of Suicide Squad dressed as Deadpool, just to really hammer home how much better Marvel is doing cinematically than DC. Oooh burn! 

Whilst the story of Suicide Squad is kind of cool: a group of the world’s most villainous and deadly characters are roped together to help save the world from an evil witch that their very own bosses have managed to unleash, all the while never promised to get any of the glory if they succeed, the film itself suffers mostly from half-arsed writing and uninspiring performances. 

With so many cool villains thrown together, it quickly became apparent to me that the writers didn’t know how to make each one shine or be different from any similar onscreen characters. Flimsy back-stories were tossed out at the introduction of each character, most of them had at least one ‘funny’ one-liner, and the movie quickly became more about the weak-arse ‘struggles’ of Deadshot (Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) than anything else. 

Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if both Deadshot and Harley Quinn were interestingly portrayed, seeing as they are kind of cool characters; Harley Quinn is phenomenally popular. But Will Smith is just Will Smith in another action-y, science fiction movie, going through the motions and going kind of numb at the more dramatic scenes and Margot Robbie is just this manic pixie cliché with essentially one dimension. The ‘conflict’ that she goes through with her newfound ‘friendships’ and her ‘romantic’ relationship with the Joker (Jared Leto, who is only in the movie because Harley Quinn is and thus really serves no purpose and suffers from stabbing comparisons to Heath Ledger) is not heartfelt, but shallow and just plain old boring. Sadly you can’t help but feel that Harley is just there for the sexy angle which Robbie does bring, but not much more than that is on the plate. 

Further negatives: the links to Batman vs. Superman are cumbersome and ugh, and the little titbit at the end that is meant to tease and tantalize everyone for the next DC instalment is just dull and predictable. Then we have the soundtrack, which was way too heavy on popular songs and unbalanced in its timing and tried to be cool like Guardians of the Galaxy or Deadpool, but just failed. 

But, to give niceties where they are deserved, the action sequences are pretty cool. The battles and the CGI, though a little reminiscent of Thor or The Last Witchhunter, are still pretty slick and shimmering, the special effects surrounding the Witch are particularly mesmerising and deserve a bit of an accolade. 

Aside from that, Suicide Squad is a movie that didn’t even live up to my reasonably low expectations of it. It suffers from things that many films across different genres can suffer from, but the real stinger at the end of the day is that this is a ‘superhero’ action movie about kooky and crazy villains and somehow they made it boring!!!

Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Ike Barinholtz, Ted Whittall, David Harbour, Robin Atkin Downes, Robert B. Kennedy, Shailyn Pierre-Dixon, James McGowan, Jim Parrack, Common, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Ezra Miller, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Cara Delevigne, Joel Kinnaman, Adam Beach, Karen Fukuhara, Jared Leto, and Ben Affleck.