Suicide Squad is the third official film in the DC Extended
Universe, a bit tangential to what's come before, save for a couple of
Superman/Aquaman references, as well as the appearance of Bruce
Wayne/Batman (Affleck, Gone Girl)
and a cameo by The Flash to remind us there's more going
on in the world than just what's surrounding this new cast of
super-powered characters. Warner Bros' wants to remind us that this
offshoot ties in with what they've planned so far in their mad rush to
catch up with the Marvel films and their jam-packed universe of
already beloved characters, but we've never really seen any of these
new Suicide Squad characters on the big screen before. So,
it's a few little cameos, the revamped appearance of Batman's main
nemesis, Jared Leto's (Dallas Buyers
Club) take on The Joker, and a great deal of
concentration on the biggest stars of the film, Will Smith (Concussion) and Margot
Robbie (The Legend of Tarzan), as Deadshot and Harley Quinn respectively.
The Dirty Dozen-inspired plotline involves black ops
ringleader, federal agent Amanda Waller (Davis,
Blackhat), bringing together Task Force
X, a group of strangers, all violently criminal super-powered
sociopaths locked away in elaborately imagined high-security prisons,
forced to do the government's dirty work to stave off the threat of
other meta-humans that, in the wake of the death of Earth's savior,
Superman, can't be stopped by conventional forces. To keep these
fiercely independent baddies under control, these criminals are
injected with micro-explosives (a la Escape from New York)
through which Waller can detonate them with the touch of a phone
app, and to sweeten the deal, promises of reduced sentences.
Their first big mission ends up being taking down the evil, ancient
entity known as Enchantress, who has usurped, for spells, the body of
a scientist named Dr. June Moone (Delevingne,
Paper Towns) -- an entity once controlled by
Waller but she managed to finally break free from the curse that bound
her.
One of the weaknesses of Suicide Squad is the sheer amount of
characters that it must introduce, relegating the first half hour to a
collection of brief dossier-style bios and a singular introductory
scene to define each one of the characters. And just when you think
they're done, a handful of other characters get introduced. Other than
our pre-conceived fondness for a few of the actors, and, for comic
fans, some of the characters, there's just not enough development
given to any of them for us to truly care about what happens to them
as they battle for their mission, as well as their own livelihoods.
Other than the fact that he's haunted by his love for his daughter,
who pleads with him to give up the criminal life, we learn that
gun-for-hire Deadshot is called this because he never misses a shot (a
la Bullseye from Marvel's Daredevil). Harley Quinn, the most
well-known of the principal Suicide Squad members, is a former
psychiatrist who turned sociopath herself when becoming attached to
The Joker while trying to treat him in Arkham Asylum, but we get
little feel of why she's so enamored, and anything about her other
than she wears sexy outfits and talks like a ditzy New Yorker (though
sometimes forgetting) now that she doesn't wear glasses any longer.
The rest of the team is barely even dealt with, save for some
backstory to El Diablo (Hernandez, Bad Moms), the pyromaniac-turned-pyrophobic
Mexican-American whose inability to control his literally fiery
outbursts during moments of rage ended up causing a family tragedy.
The villains are a liability as well, especially the occasional
tar-bodied, spore-skinned humanoid forms that are obviously injected
so that Ayer can up the violence quotient and still maintain a PG-13
rating. But the big bad bosses of the film are also a
disappointment, including the evil-but-conflicted black-magic witch in
a good human's body, Enchantress, and the superfluous inclusion of her
hulking demonic brother at her side, Incubus, whose abilities are
thinly defined and whose motivations other than perhaps family loyalty
are not at all dealt with. The ending of the film strongly
echoes the climax of the film Ghostbusters, with Enchantress
substituting for Gozer the Gozerian amid a similar cloudy,
lightning-blazed cloud portal, including giving her a kooky new wave
look, as well as an incredibly silly-looking, jittery dance style as
she speaks as erratic as watching an inflatable air dancer at your
local car dealership. We get her motivations, but they don't
pass any sort of snicker test: she wants to eradicate humanity because
we've supplanted worship of these mystical creatures in favor of a
preoccupation with machines, including, ironically, the phone app that
might destroy those out to destroy her. Jared Leto, in a small,
mostly tangential role playing The Joker, is a push at best; he won't
make anyone forget Heath Ledger's iconic turn any time soon -- or Jack
Nicholson's and Cesar Romero's for that matter.
There are some
strengths as well. Ayer has a good command of law-enforcement and
military types, as well as the street cred to understand how they
interact with the criminal elements, which are usually featured in all
of his films. Smith and Robbie acquit themselves well, sharing a nice,
albeit limited, chemistry together, perhaps cultivated from their time
together working as leads in their recent semi-romantic effort,
Focus. He also knows how to cut together a pop/rock/rap
soundtrack to action sequences and give them the propulsion necessary
to get audiences prone to music-video editing a few moments of
excitement as the principal characters go into their respective
battles throughout the fictitious Midway City. The neon-infused,
tattoo-tinged, psychobilly look and vibe separate Ayer's film from
that of the other superhero properties, infusing an appropriately
dark, trashy, bad-boy image to the film that sets the mood for the
crazy amorality that ensues.
However, what keeps Suicide
Squad on the level of being merely "passable entertainment at
best" is the choppy and stuttering nature of the ill-defined plot,
perhaps undone by yet another instance of nervous studio meddling,
ostensibly to try to not stall momentum for their young universe of
tent-pole films meant to keep them in the black for years to come.
Ayer has said that there are many deleted scenes we'll be seeing
come the Blu-Ray release, though he does state that the theatrical
release is his final cut, unlike the Batman v Superman
release that had Zack Snyder cutting out characters and altering story
elements to squeeze the film down to 2.5 hours from his original
3-hour cut. Nevertheless, the film had a lot of pre-release press
coverage that substantial re-shoots had been done on the film due to
the negative reviews received by the critical press, as well as less
than die-hard fans, toward the grimness and lumbering nature of
Batman v Superman, and the success of lesser established
superhero flicks with lots of music and humor in
Guardians of the
Galaxy and Deadpool.
Suicide Squad has
its share of enjoyable moments, and how much you ultimately come away
liking the film overall will be mainly determined by how many of these
moments entertain you enough to be willing to overlook the more
underwhelming and underdeveloped moments in its storyline and
one-dimensional characterizations. It does sport a lengthy run
time for a film that doesn't really wrestle much with important
themes, and it probably introduces about a half-dozen too many
super-powered characters in its rogues gallery that distract more than
they enhance, and yet, taken as purely a popcorn entertainment
experience, the humor, likeable actors, and Ayer's ability to draw out
good kinetic energy keeps the film from sinking from the leaden weight
of its ramshackle plotting. Superhero-fatigued film critics and
the uninitiated masses may scoff at the snark-fueled, comic-book
antics, but DC Comics devotees will likely champion the film for the
very same reasons.
-- There is an extra scene midway through the closing credits.
Qwipster's rating
:
©2016 Vince Leo
