'Suicide Squad' Review
Since the first trailer was shown last summer at San Diego Comic Con, 'Suicide Squad' has been one of the most buzzed about super hero films in recent memory. This past year, we were inundated with trailers, clips, TV spots, set photos and tons of other marketing materials. Finally, the film has hit theaters, so let's get into it.
Centering around a team of super villains that are forced into a mission to save the world, 'Suicide Squad' was, for me, an incredibly disappointing film. As I'm thinking about it more, this film was pretty bad.
At no point did I feel connected to any of the characters, story lines, or action scenes. The whole thing felt awkward and out of place, tonally. The gross misuse of music and flashbacks really took me out of the film multiple times. The overall story just didn't really resonate with me and seemed pretty pointless once the mid-credit scene was shown.
I disliked the exaggerated dramatic moments that some of the characters, namely Will Smith's "Deadshot", had. The dark nature of the characters mixed with unfunny comedic moments and the aforementioned dramatic moments really threw off the tone of the film, making it feel like a schizophrenic version of something that had the potential to be really awesome.
There were times where I was flat-out bored. Not caring for the characters was one thing, but the ridiculous villain(s) were so bad and cartoony that I just couldn't take this film seriously. The CGI in the film was atrocious and left me begging to see "Doomsday" from 'Batman v Superman' again instead.
Without getting too into detail about "Enchantress", I will say her character, played by Cara Delevingne, was hands down the worst in the movie. She was so bad and ridiculous that I truly just didn't care about the entire third act.
With all of the controversy surrounding Jared Leto's version of "The Joker", I was cautiously optimistic about his portrayal, but after seeing him, I didn't like him at all. This version of "The Joker" does NOT fit within the current tone of the DCEU film franchise. He was too close to the classic Cesar Romero version from the 60's TV series. His strange laughs came at times where it made no sense to be used. If he weren't in this film at all, it wouldn't really have made a difference.
Margot Robbie's "Harley Quinn" was nothing more than eye candy. Her comedic moments were flat and ill-timed. Her relationship with "The Joker" really handcuffs her ability to be a stronger character and I just didn't care for their relationship.
The rest of the "squad" were nothing to write home about. With "Diablo" being the only real exception (as I already mentioned "Deadshot"), they really didn't get much character development. I thought "Killer Croc" looked bad and was a dumb character and the rest were forgettable.
The logic and pacing also took me out of the film at times. The reasoning for assembling the team and the way it was edited confused me. The goal was to create a team of meta humans to fight "bad" meta humans would have made more sense if the team HAD MORE META HUMANS. "Killer Croc" and "Diablo" were the only two, with the rest being regular humans.
Batman's appearances in the film are nothing really special and wouldn't have made much of a difference if he weren't there, save for the mid-credit scene.
To be honest, at one point I felt myself starting to doze off. My fiance did fall asleep, as well as a friend of mine. Both were snoring, and I don't blame them.
I feel like a film like this would have been a much better idea down the line, once the DCEU is more established and has more characters fleshed out. Seeing these villains in other films first and then bringing them together later would have been more impactful. It should not have been the third film in the new cinematic universe.
Currently riddled with controversy, film rating aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes currently shows a 28% critic rating for the film.
All in all a bad film. I was very disappointed, as I had higher expectations going in. I wanted to like this movie way more than I actually wound up. It does make me wonder if the re-shoots did drastically change the direction and tone of the film. It will be interesting to see if there is a special edition released, like 'BvS'.
Critically, this is the third out of three DC films to be largely negative. The DC/WB execs will really have to do something special with 'Wonder Woman' and 'Justice League' if they want to be able to continue their film universe.
My rating: 4 out of 10
