Suicide Squad

Of all of the surprises at last Sunday's aside from the Best Picture debacle the biggest had to be a win for the much-maligned Suicide Squad. Granted the win was in the makeup category, and bad films with great production values have won awards before, but DC being able to count this movie as an "Oscar winner" feels more than a bit off. I also realized that I never got around to putting my own spin on this movie, so today I'll revisit DC's attempt to make a Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

After Superman's death in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice the United States government is wondering how it will handle super-powered threats moving forward. Amanda Waller, a pragmatic A.R.G.U.S. agent, has an idea. Grab a bunch of powerful inmates and send them on a life or death mission to earn time off of their sentences with deniability and bombs in their heads to guarantee compliance. Just after Waller gets approval from the higher ups, a powerful entity arrives and the newly formed Suicide Squad is sent in to stop it.

Oh goodness where to start with this thing. I'm used to watching bad movies, but a good amount of bad movies have enough absurd elements or laughable moments to be truly entertaining. Suicide Squad doesn't because it is insanely boring.

Ideally this is a team-building movie with a bunch of untrustworthy people with an untrustworthy boss working together towards a common goal and maybe gaining respect for one another. A good setting for this is something small and morally questionable like overthrowing an evil dictator, taking down some folks with superpowers, or furthering a government interest. Something where you truly need the deniability that's built into Suicide Squad. Not so. Instead, we've got a gigantic problem that truly needs the Justice League to be solved.

This would be forgivable if we liked the characters or the action was up to snuff but it simple isn't. There's three major brawls in this entire movie and none of them are interesting. One is basically a shootout that's confined to a street, followed by a very similar shootout in an office building, and then a team battle against the final boss. The just stand and shoot or punch these creepy zombie like beings for about five to ten minutes and then move on. There's no other skill sets put to use aside from fighting ability.

Character wise we're only given insight into three of them. Deadshot wants to see his daughter, Harley Quinn wants to see the Joker, and their leader Rick Flagg really wants to save his girlfriend. There's nothing that truly bonds them together and the film's attempts at banter only work when they're delivered by Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Oh and if we're talking casting the inclusion and performance of Jared Leto's Joker is all pretty awful. Most of the time Joker's arrival makes things more interesting, but here he's clearly a distraction from the main plot. I think the screenwriters missed that the appeal of Quinn's character is that she's perpetually put upon by Joker but remains loyal to him. It's way more interesting and tragic than the "I gotta save my woman by any means" Joker they provide here. Leto isn't terribly interesting either. Method acting shenanigans or not, I don't think he needs another go round in the green hair.

Even inherently interesting characters like Katana don't even get introductions. She literally shows up on a helicopter just before the team takes off with a brief clip of her slicing and dicing dudes in Japan. After that they briefly mention how her sword works, because that part is kinda important but that's all he hear from her.

The only time the movie actually works is toward the beginning as we see how each of them ended up in prison, hear about their skill sets, and listen to them crack jokes. It's far more interesting than the plot that follows, but also serves as a giant irritating what-if.

The story is pretty terrible. Not only is the aforementioned setup bad, but the movie keeps giving us plot twists or roadblocks seemingly for the sake of padding the run time. The reveals are usually things the audience already knew or could've figured out awhile ago, and the threat in question only exists because of Suicide Squad's creation. The characters are all one note and we never learn about any layers to them. Then towards the end, when we're supposed to be emotionally invested in whether they live or die, I was laughing at moments of supposed unity that hadn't even been hinted at before. Right before the boss fight the group decides to complete the mission....'cause the script said so and we're loyal to each other now? It's pretty awful.

I also don't notice stuff like this but I don't think I could have picked more stereotypical music choices throughout the entire film. Old standbys like "Fortunate Son" when they hop in a helicopter, "Sympathy for the Devil" when the team is getting assembled, "House of the Rising Sun" in the least original and impactful ways.

Poorly constructed from top to bottom Suicide Squad doesn't have anything to recommend and doesn't even deliver a new dimension to the bleak DC Comics Universe. Skip this one.