Suicide Squad★★1/2
It could have been good
But not enough backstory
And disjointed plot
The U.S. government gives a team of supervillains a chance at redemption. The catch: their mission will probably kill them all.
I will freely admit to being excited about seeing Suicide Squad based solely on the trailers, a few of which I've posted previously and are actually quite good. Sadly, the movie on the whole suffered from what is seemingly DC's curse when it comes to their comic movies: they focus too much on putting specific characters on the big screen, and don't worry about actually making a good movie.
Let's focus on the good things, first: Margot Robbie was a great Harley Quinn. She was one of the few characters in the movie to experience any sort of growth, and she seemed like a whole, realistic (if overly sexualized and totally insane) person. She had layers, which, from what little I know about the comic character, is accurate.
Diablo was interesting for very similar reasons. His backstory was endearing, and the changes he underwent, both physically and teamwork-related, were pretty damn impressive.
And, I like Will Smith. He was basically playing "Will Smith who shoots well and isn't bothered by killing people who deserve it," but I'm all for him being in movies.
The rest of the movie, well ... just didn't work for me. (And that's putting it nicely.) The plot was disjointed; specifically, the flow of character backstory > little bit of plot > lots more character backstory > more plot that might not actually be important by the end of the film > character "introductions" with no backstory > plot that diverges to something else ... There were glimpses of an engaging story told by interesting characters somewhere in the mess, but it was cut together in a truly terrible way.
The other characters, too, weren't given any opportunity to shine. For example, I kept thinking about how terrible Jai Courtney's Australian accent was as Captain Boomerang—and having to remind myself that he's actually Australian. And watching Jared Leto's Joker was painful, and unnecessarily and scarily abusive. (I also couldn't help but picture Viola Davis' face at Comic Con whenever he showed up on screen.)
I really try to like DCs attempts at movies, I do. I actually really like Man of Steel, as much as that's an unpopular opinion. I have high hopes for Wonder Woman. I just wish the powers that be would focus on good movies first with name recognition second. Or spend more time building up the people we're supposed to know, and not expect 30 seconds of exposition to make us feel something.
Previously, in DC movies:
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (★★)
- Man of Steel (★★★★1/2)
The Man of Steel review is housed on my old blog.
P.S.—The Suicide Squad soundtrack is pretty great, and way better than the actual movie.
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