Suicide Squad Poster Featured Movies Reviews 

Suicide Squad‘s Bark Is A Lot Worse Than Its Bite

By | August 5th, 2016
Posted in Movies, Reviews | 4 Comments

Suicide Squad explodes into theaters today, just as our review explodes into your eye holes. Check it out below but watch out for full spoilers for both Suicide Squad and Batman v. Superman below this picture of Jared Leto.

We were spoiled with Batman v. Superman.

That’s not to say Batman v. Superman was an underrated classic or even that it was somehow better than Suicide Squad. BvS was a dumpster fire of a film, the closest we’ll ever get to a Tommy Wiseau-directed superhero flick. From Jesse Eisenberg pissing in a jar he sneaks onto the Congress floor to Superman weakly dying to end the film on a deflated note, BvS felt like it was taking risks. It was a terrible film, but not one that played it safe.

Suicide Squad plays it safe. For a film with the word “suicide” in the title, it plays it boringly safe. That sounds surprising considering how intensely director David Ayer has been defending his film on Twitter, from the movie’s gun heavy aesthetic to how so much of the film’s publicity has focused on how ~twisted~ Jared Leto got to play The Joker. Leto’s performance in the film’s okay, even if he acts more like Dave Chappelle’s impression of Rick James than an actual character. But, for real, he’s in the film for seven minutes. Yeah, Jared Leto actually mailed some used condoms to his fellow cast members for a role that’s just a few minutes shy of counting as a cameo. ~twisted~

So if this film isn’t about the Squad going after The Joker, which we all kind of assumed, what is it actually about? Strap in. After Amanda Waller sees the need to make a deterrent to any future Supermen after Clark Kent’s death in BvS, she begins recruiting for Task Force X. The team includes some hitmen, a few monsters, and for some reason, the unpowered accomplice to one of the world’s most dangerous criminals, who’s more of a liability than a person. Waller also recruits an archaeologist possessed by the spirit of an Aztec God who quickly gets loose and summons her brother who begins a rampage across Midway City. Waller’s deterrent against future superhuman attack was to utilize a 6000+ year old god and hope it’d all go well.

It doesn’t.

It takes about 40 minutes for archeologist June Moon (my favorite Dr. Seuss character) to lose control of The Enchantress. In the meantime, we get introduced one by one to the members of the team and it’s such a chore. It’s just one section after another with a soundtrack of songs that are meant to make everything feel cooler but just end up being a distraction. Amanda Waller could be brewing some coffee and they’ll just start blasting Blur so you forget you’re watching Amanda Waller brew coffee.

That said, I’d absolutely watch Viola Davis do anything as Waller. The woman’s vicious and one of the best translations of a comic character from the page to screen. Out of the whole cast she and Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg do the best with what they’re given. Will Smith is good at being Will Smith as Deadshot but he regularly flip flops from cold hitman with perfect accuracy to Homeless Dad from Arrested Development. He just wants his kid back. He wants his kid back so bad that not only does he never stop talking about it, but he has a flashback of his daughter telling him not to shoot Batman while he’s about to shoot the main bad guy to save the world. I feel like your daughter would be cool with you taking that particular shot, Floyd.

Oh yeah, Ben Affleck’s Batman is in this too. So’s Ezra Miller’s Flash. I have nothing to say about either.

There’s a couple of other highlights in the Suicide Squad cast (Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang was great as was Jay Hernandez as El Diablo). The performance that’s going to solicit the most discussion is Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, a tangled mess of a character who invites all sorts of different discussions. There’s her role as the film’s walking sex appeal, basically the epitome of Kate Beaton’s Strong Female Character and her casting as the ~crazy~, in tandem with the ~twisted~ Joker.

Continued below

Since a lot of people will end up discussing the frankly abusive relationship she and Joker share, I figure I should point out why it was so disappointing to watch here. Margot Robbie does an incredible job making Harley a character you wanna root for, not just because she’s funny but because you can see her as a real survivor of abuse. So when Amanda Waller blows up The Joker’s helicopter (I was the only one in the theater to burst out laughing) it leads to Harley stepping up, accepting the friends she has in Task Force X, and beating the bad guy. It’s a great arc for Harley! Then The Joker bursts through her cell wall and we’re back to square one. Maybe we’re supposed to emphasize with her in the way we would anyone who relapses into an abusive relationship?

I don’t know if this film has the subtlety of that kind of message considering one character has a sword that contains the soul of her dead husband. YEAH. Katana in this film is crazy with a capital bananas. She shows up halfway through after we’ve introduced everyone else and all she does is when not killing monsters is weep at her sword which contains the souls of everyone it’s killed. This is not followed up AT ALL. Will Smith just hears all this and is like “Yeah, that’s fine.” That and the fact that Diablo can turn into a fire demon that’s related to Enchantress are the craziest unsaid things about this film.

As insane as Katana’s whole deal is, it’s still not as wild as Enchantress. After Enchantress fully takes over Dune Poon’s body, Cara Delevingne just hula dances in front of a portal in a skimpy swimsuit for the rest of the movie. They also reveal that all the alien soldiers at her disposal are created when she makes out with every individual prisoner brought to her. She had to make out with each of the hundreds of aliens the Squad shoots down in this movie. None of this feels threatening, it just feels like poor Cara Delevingne lost a bet.

So if the meat and potatoes of this movie tastes stale is there anything else worth watching?

Not really?

Even if you can accept the insane plot with Enchantress, it doesn’t really feel like there are any stakes. The Suicide Squad is meant to be the team where anyone can die, that’s why Waller assembles a team of disposable super villains. Two people die over the course of this movie and one is a heroic sacrifice. The other is Slipknot, a dude who’s really good at climbing buildings with a grappling hook. He’s in this movie to demonstrate how Waller can detonate any of the characters with the push of a button and goddamn does he give that disposable vibe the moment his Steven Seagal looking ass waddles into frame.

Like I mentioned at the top of this review, Suicide Squad never takes the kiddie wheels off. That’s got nothing to do with the film’s PG-13 rating either. For a movie that promises to be so different from anything else we’ve seen, it takes very little risks. The risks it does take involve an inexplicable plot and a soundtrack that cost half the film’s budget. The worst part is it’s not even a bad movie. It’s fine, it’s everything else we’ve ever seen. But whereas BvS felt like an intense fever dream, and was truly one of the best experiences I’ve had going to the theaters, Suicide Squad is just an okay advertisement for Hot Topic’s Harley Quinn fashion line.

Final Verdict: 4.8 – Go back and tell me Jared Leto isn’t doing a Dave Chapelle Rick James impression.


//TAGS | Movies

James Johnston

James Johnston is a grizzled post-millenial. Follow him on Twitter to challenge him to a fight.

EMAIL | ARTICLES


  • MoviesReviews
    The Boy and the Heron

    By | Dec 7, 2023 | Movies, Reviews

    Some Mild Spoilers WithinIn the early days of World War II, twelve-year old Mahito Maki loses his mother in a hospital fire. Leaving his home in Tokyo to move across Japan with his father and pregnant stepmother, Mahito discovers all may not be as it seems on the grounds of his new home when a […]

    MORE »
    The Marvels featured MoviesReviews
    The Marvels

    By | Nov 14, 2023 | Movies, Reviews

    By now, you might have heard that The Marvels is underperforming at the box office and wondering if it’s just not worth seeing. Well, that low performance is a huge shame, because The Marvels is one of the best movies this side of Endgame. It’s fun, it’s filled with great action, and it gives all […]

    MORE »

    -->