Movie Review: Suicide Squad

Fresh off the heels of the somehow successful “Batman V Superman”, DC continues to expand it’s cinematic universe with a movie about a bunch of characters that even a hardcore comic book fan such as myself is not even entirely sure he’s ever heard of. “Suicide Squad” is a movie, and that might be the best statement I can make about it.  OK, that’s a lie.  It certainly wasn’t bad, in fact it came close to being good. Unfortunately too much Jared Leto and a villain that made no freaking sense ruins everything.

SPOILERS!

OK, the good? Will Smith is great as Deadshot even though he’s basically playing himself if Will Smith had become an assassin…which he probably has at this point in his life because he’s tired of people asking him about DJ Jazzy Jeff and Carlton.  Viola Davis is fantastic as Amanda Waller. I really like Batman’s cameos, I enjoyed the Flash cameo and Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang were alright as well.  Margot Robbie was OK as Harley Quinn. Anyone saying she was great is lying to themselves for reasons I can’t possibly comprehend.

The plot comes out of nowhere, they literally start the film with a meeting where Viola Davis and some government knuckleheads are deciding to assemble the Suicide Squad for what seems like no reason at all. “We’re assembling a team of the worst people possible on Earth.”  “Why?”  “Because we have nothing better to do.”  “OK, lets do it!”  That’s how that scene should have went down. Also there is no threat at the beginning of the movie until oh my god the meta-human they were manipulating became self aware and turned on them! So they assemble this team of assholes and give them a cool highlight reel type introduction of each character which seemed like it lasted for 30 minutes. They are then taken out of jail for a mission that isn’t even really clear until they’re on a helicopter flying into the climax of the first “Ghostbusters” movie.  Side note: thank goodness DC has all these fictional cities that they can destroy and rebuild as they please. The city is where the Enchantress and her brother the EnMantress? (I never caught his name) are fucking shit up and building a machine that will destroy Earth.  What an original concept!  Oh, they are also turning people into a mindless army of avocado monsters who seem to have no fighting ability whatsoever and are defeated quite easily.  So the villains are just terrible and in the end when they defeat Enchantress she basically turns into Zuul. So yeah it seems like they remade “Ghostbusters” twice this year. Jokes on you!

Speaking of jokes, the Joker….holy crap what a disaster.  Jared Leto’s Joker is what the Joker would be like if he lived in his parents basement and his parents were still alive and nagging him about when he was going to get a real job.   I don’t know what he was trying to do but literally in every scene that he’s in I found myself feeling physically ill.  In one scene he’s doing a bad Heath Ledger impression, in the next scene he’s doing a bad impression of the Joker from “Batman: The Animated Series”. There may have even been a Cesar Romero impression in there as well, I’m not sure. It was infuriating because every time the movie started to flow and get somewhere, here comes Jared Leto to make you hate yourself for watching it.

So the Suicide Squad saves the day mainly because El Diablo (The character who spends 75% of the movie pouting and refusing to use his powers) decides to morph into some kind of fire beast and takes down the EnMantress. Then they all go back to jail and live happily ever after. Oh but Will Smith gets to see his daughter for five minutes and Killer Croc gets cable. Only 10 more of these missions and somebody might be able to get a parole hearing within the next 20 years.

Off to watch a boxing match in the 1970’s.

This may seem like a mostly negative review but I did actually enjoy more than 50% of the film. I heard that they cut a ton of Joker scenes out of the movie so with a little luck they will cut out the rest of his scenes for the DVD/Blu-ray release. If they do that then they might have a really good film on their hands.  I think this was more cohesive than “Batman v Superman” but is that really a compliment? I’m not sure.  And by cohesive I mean it didn’t feel like a five year old was fighting with his action figures. Although I will say the soundtrack sounds like somebody abused the shit out of a mixtape they made in high school. That gets a bit distracting as you’re not sure if you’re watching a movie or a car commercial.  Basically you can break this film down into three parts:

1) Good scene that’s ruined by Jared Leto.

2) Good scene that’s ruined by pop music.

3) Good scene ruined by crappy villain.

Watch this movie on cruise control and you might enjoy it.

Me while watching this movie.

Rating: 5.5/10