My Review of Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad is directed by David Ayer and stars: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jared Leto and many more. It follows a team of villains who are forced to be part of a covert government task force named ‘Task Force X’, otherwise known as ‘Suicide Squad’. They are sent into Midway city to rescue a very important person from a so called ‘terrorist attack’ and then end up trying to save the world.
Let’s talk about the ‘squad’. Deadshot (Will Smith) was probably in the top 3 characters in the film. Not the best out of them but he was an all-round good character. His costume was cool, his motivations made sense and he had good chemistry with basically all of the cast especially Rick Flagg and Harley. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) was brilliant definitely the standout when thinking of this film every one of her lines were perfect, funny and sinister. I think most of the credit has to go to Margot Robbie who, as always, goes all in and comes out looking even better than she did before. Although, her apparent sudden change of heart towards the end of the film is a bit questionable however it isn’t really a big problem. There was one scene with her that was just thrown in there, where she has a fight scene in an elevator. It was so odd and not needed.
El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) was a massive surprise. To be honest I thought he was going to die in the first thirty minutes but in fact he turns out to really be the heart of this movie with an incredibly emotional back story and when he unleashes his full power, it is utterly awesome and a nice surprise. Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) was ultimately wasted in my opinion. He had one or two funny moments but my main issue is that he is called ‘Captain Boomerang and throws a grand total of three boomerangs. That’s like Hawkeye only firing three arrows in an Avengers film. There are some other aspects of his character, for example a certain stuffed unicorn made no sense, was just stupid and not funny.
Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) was also not used to his full potential in this film. He like most of the characters has some funny moments but doesn’t really do anything. There is one part of the film where he just shows up and may as well have said I have to do this or I will have literally done nothing for the entire film. A positive to mention about his character was his design it is all done with prosthetics and it looks amazing. Katana (Karen Fukuhara) was maybe the most disappointing character in the film. She does nothing. Literally nothing. Her back story is one and explained in one line of dialogue and there was one scene in Japan with her which was so odd and obviously re-shot. She kills people with her sword, called soul taker, and you don’t even see it take a soul. Slip Knot is in this film. I have absolutely no idea who played him but whoever it was played him for three minutes.
Now other positives about the film. It is a definite step in the right direction for DC and Warner Brothers. The film embraces its comic booky-ness and this enhances it massively. The film is fun, there are lines that got everyone in the cinema laughing. I was smiling most of the time during the film, which is something I cannot say about Batman Vs Superman. I was dreading the soundtrack going into the film but it actually ended up working mostly. There was one instance where an Eminem song was said and it did not work at all. Towards the end of the film they leave the soundtrack behind and chose to stick with a pretty good score. Even if it did weirdly sound like the score from Batman Vs Superman. Jared Leto’s joker was awesome but we just didn’t get enough of him. One of his scenes with Common didn’t really make sense to me. The editing was choppy and I had no idea what was going on. But apart from that his scenes were stellar. Also his relationship with Harley is explored well even if it is just mostly over text message. The origin scene for Harley was very well executed with some incredible visuals.
Structurally this film is a total mess. There isn’t really a second act. There is almost two third acts. We get introduced to the squad and then BAM here’s the villain and they’re going to shoot a big blue beam into the sky and oh my it’s going down… And then nothing really happens with that for an hour. Then the squad is on a mission in Midway City to rescue a person? There’s a world ending catastrophe happening but this task force that was assembled to fight meta humans is being used to rescue someone who is already in a secret bunker. It made no sense it’s like they rushed into starting the villains plan and had no idea what to do for the rest of the film to make it longer than an hour. I just feel like the plot is incredibly rushed and that should be expected when David Ayer was only given six weeks to write this script. Warner Brothers need to pull it together.
The Batman scenes in this film felt so out of place the police could have done what he did in this film so easily there was no need for him. David Ayer came out before the film was released and said that his film is like a Batman film from the villain’s perspective, which is just wrong. Batman is an afterthought, none of the characters seem to mention Batman. Another thing that bothered me was that throughout the film we are constantly told that Amanda Waller is some monster bad ass and I was just sat there with a feeling of ‘meh’. Viola Davis plays its very well, I just don’t think that she has the impact on the film people are seemingly saying she has. The villain of the movie looked rubbish and all they’re plan was to shoot a blue beam into the sky and destroy the world, haven’t seen that before… There isn’t a lot to say about the villain because there isn’t that much to them as a character they’re just there.
I feel like I am apologising for this film a lot but it’s because I actually had a good time watching this film. Yes, it has its many faults but they don’t destroy the film, you can definitely overlook them. I would recommend seeing this film and forming your own opinion on it as it seems like people have massively differing thoughts on it. I just think that Warner Brothers should just leave their film makers to do their own thing and if they want their films a certain way then they should tell the directors and creatives how you want it before production; not editing starts. But like I said before this a definite step in the right direction for DC so let’s just hope that Wonder Woman continues this trend!
