Suicide Squad Review

This review is NOT spoiler free.

Expectations: Going in, I tried very hard to ignore the critical lambasting that this film was getting. I was pretty sure that this would be DC’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the opening weekend box office seemed a pretty strong indicator. I was expecting a fun, action packed, wisecracking film that you shouldn’t over-think and I got pretty much exactly that. I’d give this film a 7/10.

Easter Eggs: The only one I caught was in the dossier for Harley Quinn, which listed her as an accomplice in the death of Robin.

Action: Honestly, this was the reason you were going to see this film and the director knew it too. This film barely takes a breath without something blowing up or someone getting shot, punched, stabbed, or electrocuted. Helicopters plummet from the sky, buildings are destroyed, lightnings carve apart aircraft carriers, bullets rain down from above, and evil minions are shot, sliced in two, charbroiled, and have their heads smashed open with a bat.

The director and coordinators did a pretty good job of showcasing the different talents for violence on display with the anti-heroes. Harley’s bat has a cartoonish “Donk” sound overlaid on it and she gets by on insanity driven fearlessness. Killer Croc bodily lifts enemies and slams them into one another with beastial strength. Katana dances her way through bad guys. Soldiers lay down a fusilade like they’re supposed to in movies. And Deadshot climbs on a car and shows them up, gunning down fifty minions in maybe ten seconds.

Somehow, though, the film is surprisingly bloodless. You never see the victims of the Big Bad’s Death Machine. The evil minions are all featureless, bulbous pinatas that explode into black pumpkin chunks. Victims of one of the demi-god bad guys happen almost entirely offscreen. And even the human gunshot victims die in a sort of “Bang! You’re dead!” abruptness.

That doesn’t mean that the action isn’t disturbing. Some of the violence takes the form of torture. The camera follows one bullet into a man’s head. And then there’s Harley and Joker...but we’ll get to that later.

Other things I didn’t like:

• Too many shaky-cam cuts. I HATE shaky-cam.
• Batman shows up as the antagonist in a couple scenes and he is neither impressive nor scary. That just ain’t right.
• Slipknot, a character so minor he is literally there just to have his head removed as a lesson to the rest of the Squad.

Music: The music written specifically for the film is, well...forgettable. It fits the movie, it builds the tension, and it does all this without you noticing it much. The songs used for the film though, were on the money. With one notable exception (Spirit in the Sky is just so discordant with the scene it’s used in...which, come to think of it, may be the point), every last one is placed perfectly and excellently suited to the character. When Sympathy for the Devil kicked on, I just knew Amanda Waller was about to slide out of that black, unmarked motorcade. And so did everyone who knows the character.

Costumes/Visuals: I thought the film looked pretty good for the budget. The set pieces weren’t that impressive, but the costumes evoked the history of the characters and looked reasonable given the setting. The Deadshot costume was right off of the Justice League cartoon show. Even Killer Croc looked believable. Katana’s mask looked a little silly, but it’s part of the character. They could have done a bit better with the Enchantress CGI effects, but I thought that the transformations used on that character were effective.

Going into the film the big question mark was, of course, the Joker. And I think the film answered that one well. Jared Leto’s makeup and costuming look solidly different from pretty much anything heretofore: a crazy mish-mash of Mob Boss, Pennywise, and a Dental Insurance Nightmare.

Original Material: Speaking of the Joker, while he and Harley Quinn have a long history of deranged not-love relationship in the cartoons and some comics, this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like a detailed origin story for Harley. It is at the same time engrossing, disturbing, and heartrending. She is the embodiment of Stockholm Syndrome and the film seems to hint that a part of her still wants to save the Joker from himself. For his part, Joker seems to require Harley the way a heroine addict needs a fix. He needs her adoration, her worship or his life has no direction or meaning. Thus, he goes to incredible lengths to retrieve her from her imprisonment.

The relationship between Rick Flagg and June Moone/Enchantress is new, from what I can tell. It obviously gave Flagg a reason to do Waller’s bidding, but I think it may have taken his character too far from the comic original.

Screenplay: I’ll get the bad news out of the way first.

As stated, the film kept the pedal down on the action, but the plot meanders quite a bit. I believe the rumors that there are at least twenty five shots in the various trailers that never made it into the theatrical release of the film. It doesn’t help that part of that dislocation comes from establishing flashbacks for every character, which zip us out of the narrative proper. Neither does it help that some of those flashbacks (especially following Harley and Joker) were so weird, interesting, and just plain different that I wished they’d been in their own movie instead. You don’t mind the flashbacks, but there’s a lot of run time eaten up by these scenes and they could have been worked into the flow of the narrative a bit better.

Also of note in the thumbs down category are characters who don’t get enough screen time to be worth it. As I noted in the Action section, Slipknot is less of a character and more of a humanoid object lesson. They could have demonstrated the explosives on a pumpkin with just as much effect and not needed the expense of casting and costuming this character.

Speaking of non-entities, there are two more prime examples: Incubus and Captain Boomerang. Incubus, the male half of the evil-Mayan-Wonder-Twins, is there to provide an escape loophole for the Enchantress and to look imposing. He looms well and that’s about it it.

Jai Courtney is wasted on Captain Boomerang. We learn nothing about the character’s backstory beyond “he’s a thief and a murderer”, he does literally nothing useful for the Squad the entire movie, and his dialogue consists of bad pickup lines and un-funny jokes. He’s despicable, worthless as a member, and worst of all boring. You could remove him entirely from the film and no one would have noticed.

But the biggest flaw in the film is the incongruity of motivations versus actions. Midway through the film, the entire Suicide Squad is let off the hook by a desperate and beleaguered Flagg. He breaks the device that will activate the explosive devices in their necks. They can escape. There is an entire city devoid of people and full of valuables at their disposal. And there is no upside to taking on a maniacal demi-goddess when you can steal enough money to buy an island and disappear.

Besides Flagg, his mook soldiers, and Katana (all of whom are the “heroes”), only two Squad members have legitimate reasons not to run. Deadshot has a daughter and he fears for her life if Enchantress is left loose. And El Diablo is actually seeking to atone for the sins he committed in the past. Croc, Captain Boomerang, and Harley could all just walk away and be completely fine. And none of them do. Instead, they do the Right Stuff walk into certain doom. It feels very forced and punted me out of the story.

Luckily, there are things the writers got very, very right.

There are moments of real poignancy in the film. Deadshot cares deeply about his daughter and seeks to shelter her from the hard reality of his profession. Harley Quinn’s vision of what she wants most near the end of the film shows her living a normal life with a non-clown Joker in a business suit kissing their twins goodbye in the morning before work. Katana talks to the soul of her husband, which she believes is trapped inside her cursed sword. Rick Flagg obviously cares for June and is willing to lay down his life to get her back. El Diablo is so scarred by his abuses of the pyromancy he possesses that he becomes a pacifist and refuses, at first, to use his powers at all. He eventually sacrifices himself to save the other members of the Squad.

Overall, the dialogue is funny and wry. A couple of jokes are a little on the nose, like the reminders that these are the bad guys we’re cheering on, but you’ll laugh a good deal during the film.

The acting was pretty good overall. I think the writing and editing diminished some good performances from some of the cast, but there were several bright spots. Will Smith is in full form as Floyd Lawton/Deadshot. It reminded me a lot of his performances in the Men in Black films. Margot Robbie and Jared Leto are mesmerizing and disturbing to the nth as Harley and Joker. And Viola Davis was perfectly cast as Amanda Waller.

Summary: This film felt like a crossover plot between the various runs of the comics it pulls together. It keeps the pace up, it delivers solid action and genuine laughs, and it leaves plenty of room for encore performances from any or all of the characters. But it tires to do to many things and ends up dropping the ball in some areas.