Suicide Squad

Bring the blog back with something positive, he said. Stop being so negative, he said. Embrace what you love about films and throw it out there for the world to see, he said.

Then Suicide Squad happened.

The Partially Educated Review

DNR

Spoilers for Batman V Superman lie within. Deal with them.

In 50 Words or Less: Not awful, but it is a mess. Taking on far more characters than any self-respecting film would dare, it all congeals into a mess of seen before action and unearned emotional punches. Decent performances make the film worth seeing if you're interested, but the DC Universe isn't getting any healthier.

In Detail: Remember when people lamented those comic book films which tried to throw way too many villains into the mix? They may have been justified complaints, but those films were usually trying to throw 3 villains in there. Brace yourselves then, because here we have 4 definite villains and 2 ones of dubious villainy being guided by 3 people who may or may not be villains to take on a spirit of definite villainy that’s hibernating within the body of someone who most certainly isn’t a villain and turning non-villains into subservient villains. Further to this, you’ve also got one other person of definite villainy who’s attempting to disrupt the mission of the potential villains in an effort to bring back one of the definite villains into his own fold of many more definite (but characterless) villains. Then Batman arrives and-

Writer-director David Ayer was on to something good 15 years ago. He wrote the very good Training Day, before writing and directing some decent films that eventually led to the fantastic End Of Watch. Since then, he’s been on the slide. Sabotage was an Arnie film of such garbagery (it’s a word) that it almost made people consider The Expendables to be a part of the glory days (I said almost) and while Fury was one that admittedly divided opinion, I didn’t like it and that’s what counts.

Suicide Squad was meant to be the film that would bring not just Ayer’s career back on track, but also the DC Cinematic (or Extended) (or Protracted) Universe, which may have been doing OK financially, but hasn’t been putting the necessary throb into the fanboys… hearts. I’ve heard the film referred to as a victim of overhype and it isn’t really. There’s too much shoddy filmmaking on show to blame every failure on inflated expectations. The obvious litany of deleted scenes makes the film feel jumpier than Tigger with Tourettes and the detail with which characters are or aren’t introduced means every one of them might as well have a meter under them that tells us exactly how many shits we’re meant to give about them. Usually, that's...

Then there’s the dialogue and this is where the real surprises lie. Looking at Ayer’s previous work, it's not hard to detect his affection for a particular word beginning with F and it isn’t flip. Despite this, his dialogue has remained his strongest card to play. That changes here. For (I’m pretty sure the first time) Ayer finds himself within the constraints of PG-13, meaning that favourite word (it also isn’t flump) must fall by the wayside considerably. To replace this, he’s tried to get more inventive and quirky with his lines and he’s done that by trying to ape off Guardians Of The Galaxy. The difference is that Guardians’ quips felt both fluid and natural to the character’s speaking them. The ones in Suicide Squad often don’t, particularly in the case of Viola Davis, who you can almost see cringing every time she has to deal out yet another witless put-down. Though if we’re going to start talking about all the things Guardians did better, we’re going to be here a while.

There are still positives here though and enough of them to lift this from the doldrums. Ayer has always been a filmmaker that looks after his lead characters far better than his supporting ones and there is no change to that trend here. For a start Deadshot is played by Will Smith, a man who could ooze charisma reading the Chilcot inquiry. Jared Leto’s Joker is obviously the performance that people were most intrigued and he’s done a good enough job. He's fun, if not a patch on previous incarnations. But, in Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, we have the definite highlight. In fact, this combined with The Legend Of Tarzan is putting a lot of my doubts about her to rest. The films may have been lacking (mild term) overall, but they both benefitted exponentially from her presence. Credit too must go to Jay Hernandez who does some solid work as El Diablo (the only supporting roles that comes close to getting a fair shot).

The presence of these characters makes this enjoyable, but doesn't stop you from realising that the film is still a complete mess. Plot holes are everywhere, perhaps as a result of it’s ever-noticeable butchering in the editing suite. There’s also a general failure to justify the whole of the events that are going on. The banding of these characters together never feels like a good idea and frequently shows itself not to be. Also (someone else brought this point to my attention, but he can go to hell if he wants naming), there’s a persistent question of why they didn’t just get Batman to sort this out. Superman may be “dead”, but Bruce Wayne’s going perfectly strong still. Throwing him in there for a cameo (not a spoiler) just makes you question it even more and not one character thinks to bring it up.

At least it took more than a decade for me to get fed up with the Marvel films.

FIVE out of 10