Suicide Squad

*takes deep breath*

This is a hard one. A really, really hard one. For months on end, Suicide Squad has promised to be the savior of the DC extended universe. It's trailers were superb and in a class with the likes of Fury Road and Godzilla, and its marketing was unique, fun, and colorful. More people than just comic book geeks are excited to see this film about a band of misfits and criminals and that's mightily impressive. 

So then what the actual f**k happened?!

At this point, there is no longer a divide between DC and Marvel. It's a divide between good films and bad/merely okay films. And as a fan of both side's characters (probably more so DC's if I'm being honest), this breaks my heart and Suicide Squad is one of the most painful bullets. At least there is an R-rated version of Batman v Superman that works and I still believe that if you remove Eisenberg and the whole "Martha!" debacle, that film becomes pretty darn good. 

But that's where I'm lost with Suicide Squad. How did it get to this? The footage we've been seeing...the fun that the cast had...the characters included...why is this the final result?

"I'm going to save this movie from itself."

A film with just them would have been
[insert "A-OK" emoji]

Suicide Squad's first problem is that it thinks it has earned this. By that I mean, this is a team-up film of a lot of villains that aren't all that famous. Giving them personalities and backstories takes either A) skill (see Guardians of the Galaxy for this example) or B) previous world building. After the first couple villain intros you think that SS may have some skill as both Deadshot and Harley Quinn get some solid, informational, backstories. But everyone else? "Why bother" seems to be the film's opinion on that matter. One villain in particular gets a meager "that's so-and-so" intro and is off screen within three minutes after having done absolutely nothing. Truth be told, this entire movie would have been far better as a "early formation" of the squad consisting of just a few members. A collection of Quinn, Deadshot, Flagg, and Diablo would have been a tight-knit group and provided more than ample time for everyone to get the spotlight. But instead there are a ton of characters thrown in who are ultimately superfluous to the whole film.

The movie doesn't know what to focus on and that seems to be almost a metaphor for the DCEU. Do we focus on our biggest movie star, Will Smith? Do we focus on what the fans really want to see and give a lot of attention to the Joker/Quinn love? Or do we aim to give them an action film with a band of bad guys? Let's do all three! Because of this complete disorganization, the film's pacing is wild. And that's not a compliment. Within about 30 seconds of the Squad being outlined, the big, bad villain...dear sweet Lord, more on that later...all the sudden is destroying a city. No setup. No warning. Just going from "Here's our team." to "Oh s**t. Better throw them into battle right away!". Then there are a bunch of random flashbacks throughout for character development. Unfortunately, many of these flashbacks are actually fantastic, just poorly inserted and again I come back to the point: DC hasn't earned this yet. I feel like if we'd seen many of the previous Joker/Quinn flashbacks in a separate film, this one would have had so much more weight. One in particular where Joker asks Harley, "But will you live for me?" is so insanely creepy and poignant that it made me an instant fan of these "new" characters. Just too bad it was shoehorned in. 

Very interesting take on the character...
I want to see more

A lot of this is a shame because, much like BvS, the DC cinematic universe has great characters and casting. Other than Ben Affleck -- who continues to prove that he is the single BEST thing about this current universe in a post-credits scene -- Margot Robbie, Will Smith, and Jared Leto as Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and the Joker, respectively, are all instant wins. They're great characters and I enjoyed what each actor/actress brought to the role. Viola Davis as Amanda Waller is also a stud and I could easily see her becoming the "big bad" at some point along the line and Jay Hernandez is solid as Diablo though some of his growth was a bit of "too little, too late". Everyone else fares a little worse, but I wouldn't say anyone is outright terrible given what they have to work with. For those eagerly curious about Leto's Joker, I'll say that I enjoyed him and I appreciated his aesthetic style because it makes him distinctly different from Ledger's iconic portrayal. Leto's is more sensual and unhinged in a slightly goofy way. His voice is half Ledger's Joker and half-Captain Jack Sparrow and I'd say the same goes for his mannerisms. In a film with a lot of things wrong, he most certainly was not one of them.

So about now you may be thinking, "But Jordan, I'm not a critic. I don't see many movies and editing/pacing doesn't really matter to me. What else is wrong?" Unfortunately the list continues. First up would be that the villain, Enchantress (oh s**t, spoiler alert?), is one of the worst villains I've ever seen in a comic book film. That's no fault of Cara Delevingne, but the character is what's destroying the city and it was created by Waller. So...how am I supposed to give a damn? Furthermore, the character design for Enchantress is God-awful and when it comes down to it, she's nothing more than a catalyst to have a generic showdown around a glowing pillar of destruction. You may be hoping that at least there's some cool action in Suicide Squad? Especially with David Ayer -- a typically gritty director -- at the helm. I mean, I did quite enjoy Fury after all, right?  Suicide Squad boasts some incredibly boring and uninspired action, even more so than Batman v Superman. At least in that film it was mildly understandable because there was only 2-3 heroes. With Squad there's no excuse whatsoever. You have a plethora of dangerous people with special abilities/talents and you don't combine them once? NOT EVEN ONCE?!? Instead, each villain continuously goes into each fight one-by-one, gets their a** kicked, and wonders what happened. Meanwhile, over at Good Movie Inc. (aka Marvel) Civil War had a 20 minute scene that was nothing BUT a combination of powers/skills. Here's a scene for Suicide Squad that I'm literally spit-balling and it's more gold than anything in the film: Captain Boomerang throws his boomerang --> slices through a few enemies' heads --> Harley sees it and keeps it going by hitting it with her bat --> kills a few more enemies --> heads past Diablo who sets it on fire and speeds it up --> boomerang kills a few more enemies but misses one --> Deadshot aims and shoots it backwards into the missed enemy. This is all captured with a tracking shot of the boomerang. End scene. You're welcome everyone with a lack of creative action talent at Warner Brothers/DC.

"Guys, let's go attack the creatures one by one in the hopes that we're successful"
"That's a great plan!" *facepalms*

Suicide Squad is one of the most disappointed I've been at the movies in a good, long while. The trailers were so damn good and it looked like it was going to be special. It looked like it was going to be something I'd want to watch over and over. But instead it almost feels like the film was constructed from the bottom up to make good trailers and its disjointed, messy, and boring result is a shame given the star power involved and the fact that some of these characters are actually fantastic. 

As there's not much left to save this summer from itself, I'm officially declaring this the worst summer for movies since I've started reviewing and I'm copyrighting #SummerofBummers. That conclusion would be unfair to place squarely on Suicide Squad's shoulders, but I'll be damned if this one isn't the biggest disappointment of them all. 

CONS:

• Awful pacing. One moment the team is getting put together and the next there's a massive threat to a city. At one point I literally asked aloud, "When the f**k did that happen?!?". I pay attention to my movies. That should never be happening
• Outside of the core group, there are some useless characters who don't get very much to do
• Terrible, terrible villain who is generic and even worse, exists only because of Waller anyway
• Boring action. Not a single scene will be one that I cite as "Best of" at the end of the year
• Too many odd instances where you get the impression that they filmed something simply to put it in the trailers
• Most of the humor falls flat
• Shoehorned flashbacks that could have been far more effective in other ways

PROS:

• Starts off strong and Deadshot/Quinn's introductions are solid
• Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, and Jared Leto are keepers for the DCEU. Their characters are great and enjoyable to watch
• Though they're part of the aforementioned "shoehorned flashbacks" Harley/Joker scenes are consistently fantastic
• Great soundtrack
• Some jokes are pretty funny
• The trailers were great pieces of music-matching art

Rath's Review Score: 4.5/10