Suicide Squad Movie Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

Suicide Squad (spoiler-free review)

So after the colossal dumpster fire that was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner Brothers was kind of banking on Suicide Squad to be the critical success BvS wasn't. The film follows a group of convicted villains who've been essentially forced by the government to do their dirty work as a kind of black ops team. It's a fascinating and unique set-up for a story, and one that's worked several times in the past (notably in the awesome animated film "Assault on Arkham"). So, can Suicide Squad not only live up to the year of hype, but also make up for DC's disaster earlier this year?

So right out the gate, this movie is a significant improvement to Batman v Superman. It's no secret to anyone who reads this blog or anyone who knows me in real life that I wasn't particularly excited for Suicide Squad, so I walked out of this movie pleasantly surprised. First off, everything surrounding Deadshot was fantastic, from Will Smiths performance as the character to the way the character was written to his costume, it was all amazing. Also fantastic was Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, who's downright perfectly cast, as she's one of the most charismatic and expressive actresses working right now. The writing for Harley Quinn? I'll get into that later, but Margot Robbie perfectly captures the character in terms of performance.

For the most part, the actors in this movie were all really impressive. Viola Davis is as excellent as ever as a commanding and intimidating presence, and Joel Kinnaman is as good as ever as (IMO) one of the more underrated actors right now. The scene stealers for me however were Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, and Karen Fukahara as Katana. Courtney shines in his best performance to date as a consistently entertaining comic relief, Hernandez rocks as really the emotional hook for the audience, and while Katana doesn't get a lot of screentime, Fukahara absolutely kicks ass for every second she's on screen. So if there's any character to really look forward to here, it's El Diablo, Boomerang, and Katana. They were, for me, the best parts of the movie.

So now I've talked about the best parts of the movie, I want to get into one of the absolute worst parts of the movie. Jared Leto as the Joker is so godawful, were it not for the miniscule amount of time he's in the movie, it would have ruined it for me. And I was one of the few who was actually a fan of the kind of tattoo'd look they were going for, but this version of the Joker would have been much better under a more down to Earth actor like Joseph Gilgun or someone like that. Instead, Jared Leto plays the character like a drunk frat kid trying to do a Jim Carrey impression, I wish I were kidding. Originally, I wasn't even going to bring this up, he's hardly in the movie enough to warrant talking about it. And if it were any other character, I'd bypass it entirely. However, the butchering of what is one of the most compelling comic book villains ever for the sake of Jared Letos self-indulgence - mixed with the prospect that this obnoxious portrayal is the definitive live-action Joker for the next stretch of time - is more than enough to warrant bringing it up.

However, Jared Leto is far from this movies only issue, unfortunately. From an entirely technical standpoint, the film is a total disaster. The CGI isn't ever completely unbelievable like in Apocalypse, nor is it ever as boring as BvS, but it's still pretty bad. The worst part is director David Ayer didn't want King Shark in the film because he "didn't want a big CGI monster", when one of the two villains is a big CGI monster. And in standard DCEU fashion, the film is edited together like a first time film class project for high school, with scenes and storylines obviously taken out in the cutting room (that line where Joker says "I can't wait to show you my toys" was in every trailer for the movie but wasn't in the actual movie), and it makes it feel like another poorly cut together Franken-movie.

The script isn't any better, and while that might be more a credit to the films awful editing job, it's still noticable. While some of the story arcs and lines work, the majority of it ranges from dull and boring to downright embarrassing. The jokes in particular mostly don't land, and rarely got more than a chuckle from the audience. For example, in Katanas introduction scene, Harley Quinn makes a comment about her perfume, setting up for a joke, only the joke is incredibly lame and cringe-inducing. The actual line is "I love your perfume, what is that, the scene of death?" which is supposed to be a joke... Somehow. A lot of the humor is like that, and it's pretty bad.

Just when you think it's over, the movie continues to cause itself more problems with its pandering. This film tries way to hard to hit what seems to be the oddball combination of Mr. Robots edgy societal commentary mixed with the esoteric and twisted nature of something like Mad Max: Fury Road, but both lacks the commitment either of those have or the passion by the writers to that goal. At times Suicide Squad comes off as the filmmaking equivalent of a professional Graffiti artist hired by a Starbucks to make them seem hip and edgy, but just comes off as kind of pathetic. It's painfully obvious the film is trying to pander to the demographic of edgy angsty teenagers with neon green hair dye and grunge metal band t-shirts bought at a Hot Topic, and it comes off being just as annoying as the type of scene kid I just described.

As uncommon as it is, all the faults I just listed off weren't enough to truly kill the movie for me. They were well enough to bring it down, but not enough to ruin it. And that's because there's still plenty to enjoy depending on your taste in film. Amongst the qualities this movie had were a combination of a fantastic soundtrack and an enjoyable visual flare (for the first half), which went together to create an aesthetically pleasing movie at least. And the action sequences - while never inventive not cut together that well - were always entertaining and lasted as long as they needed to. It may not sound like much, but it somewhat made up for the long list of problems in the movie.

However, despite those qualities which somewhat made up for the editing or the annoying edginess, there was a major issue with this movie that I felt was the final nail in this loosely cut together coffin. Remember how I said I'd bring up Harley Quinns writing later? Well now I'm bringing it up. It's no secret amongst comic book fans that Harley Quinn is one of the most frequently sexualized female characters in comics, which is a shame because she's also one of the coolest characters in comics. And this film is no exception, once again taking Harley Quinn and turning her into a 2-dimensional sexual cutout with no personal independent agenda that didn't involve either Deadshot or The Joker. And there isn't even a real excuse for it either, The Force Awakens and Fury Road have both proven that you can have a film with a strong female lead who isn't just a sexual cutout for the hormonal teenagers in the audience to have something to look at. It's appalling and was what in the end basically killed it for me.

Final Rating
Is Suicide Squad awful? Not exactly, it has its moments of genuine good. The acting is mostly fantastic and the action is impressive, along with the music and cinematography being decent. However, while it made for a better movie than Killing Joke and Batman v Superman (even arguably Apocalypse), it certainly didn't make for anything great. When it comes to being the big redeemer that will save the DCEU... Yeah we'll just have to keep waiting for Wonder Woman.