To See or Not to See: Suicide Squad

The DC Extended cinematic universe is in full swing; with the middling reception of Man of Steel in 2013 and the release of Batman v. Superman to poor reviews earlier this year, can Suicide Squad save DC from another consecutive box office embarrassment?

No.

After the events of Batman v. Superman, the government deemed necessary the creation of the Suicide Squad. Made up of supervillians from across the DC universe and headed by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the squad was setup to battle meta-human threats with plausibly deniability. Sounds great on paper, but boy does it go off the rails early.

The first ten minutes of the movie introduces us to the Suicide Squad, and even that was done badly.  It’s literally Amanda Waller eating steak and sipping wine while casually reading the roster out of a two-inch thick binder. By the time they got to the third character intro, I had already checked out mentally. The way they handled the character introductions came off incredibly lazy and, I’m sorry to say, the rest of the movie doesn’t get any better.

The Suicide Squad itself is made up of seven people, but only two of them really do anything. Will Smith as Deadshot and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn are the only characters that stood out in this parade of mediocrity. Everyone else either just didn’t matter to the plot, given little to nothing to do on screen, or both. Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje)? He swims. Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney)? He threw two maybe three boomerangs throughout the whole movie. What a waste of a cast on such a thin script.

In addition to that, the only other character of note was The Joker (Jared Leto) and even he felt shoehorned in! Throughout the two hour runtime of this film, I recall only one scene in which he interacts with anyone in the Suicide squad other than Harley Quinn. And, that single scene could be cut without any changes to the rest of the script.

Speaking of The Joker, I’m at a loss for words on how Jared Leto’s portrayal made it to the silver screen. My face visibly scrunched together as my brain tried to desperately make sense of what I’m seeing. Leto’s Joker is a complete departure from The Joker we’ve known over the past twenty years. I’ve grown up with Mark Hamil’s Joker in the Batman: The Animated Series, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and the Arkham games from Rocksteady. And, I’m not sure what the hell I saw in the theatre.

I could go on about the awkward use of music, bad CGI, and terrible ending, but I won’t. Not because I don’t have anything substantial to say, it’s just that there are way too many bad things to list.

It’s really hard to stay enthusiastic about the next couple of DC films when everything they put out is as subpar as the Suicide Squad.

★ out of 4

Photo Credit: Warner Bros.