Now whether you loved or hated Batman V Superman Dawn Of Justice (and let’s face it, that seems to be the only two emotions people have towards that film) there is no denying that the film didn’t land the way Warner Brothers had hoped when they launched their DC Cinematic Universe. However with a really strong promotional push, it seemed like David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was set to put the DC Cinematic Universe back on course.
The story is essentially The Dirty Dozens crossed with Escape From New York narrative where a rag-tag group of, mostly Batman's rogue gallery, need to suit up and do the jobs that the heroes can't. There's no denying that it's an awesome premise and that there's fun moments and cool sequences, it just doesn't work as well as it should.
The pacing along with the tone is all over the place and is never truly even or balanced at any point. We have a hard 30 minute slog at the beginning where the film dedicates it's time to establishing origin stories, lots and lots of origin stories; sure it tries to jazz this up with its visuals and editing but it's still very draining at the start. We get a lot of time devoted to establishing Will Smith's Deadshot and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, however many of the other characters suffer because of this. Jay Hernandez gets some nice development at times however there are clearly some characters the film just doesn't give a shit about, don't worry, you'll know them when you see them.
Director David Ayer, the man behind Fury, End Of Watch and the critically underrated Sabotage makes some good choices with some visual tricks with the character of Enchantress and certainly has some good visual moments for most characters. This unfortunately is just undercut by some poor editing choices that fail to help establish a context; often the context for things that are happening in the story seems to have been left on the cutting room floor as can be noted by a lot of key scenes missing from the trailers.
With four stellar trailers, over twenty TV spots, a dozen featurettes and another dozen clips for the film released before Suicide Squad even hit the cinemas, one thing that the film should be credited for is not releasing any major spoiler footage from the third act. Unfortunately, there’s a reason for that.
The finale doesn’t have any big twists, no real significant sacrifices, and no investment beyond the superficial - so the truth is, there isn’t really anything to spoil in the final act.
So let’s talk about Jared Leto’s Joker.
Since the beginning, I’ve never been totally sold on the design of this new Joker. It looks like Marliyn Manson f*cked Ali-G, they had a baby and then fed that baby crystal-meth until the baby grew up and allowed itself to be painted up by a hyperactive toddler high on a Krispy Kreme binge session. I’m all cool with The Joker being a gangster, but not a really bad stereotype of a pimp-gangster.
Jared Leto is clearly giving it his all but he seems to be stuck between doing an impression of Heath Ledger's Joker and Jim Carrey's The Riddler. It's an interesting and ambitious take on The Joker, unfortunately it's just not quite there yet. It's not as memorable as Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger but that doesn't mean there isn't potential. The character is brutal and sadistic throughout his scenes in the film, but hardcore fans of The Joker/Harley Quinn relationship will note that their storyline in this film completely goes against the core of what makes that duo such an engaging partnership.
The film has a wide array of great songs scattershot across the entire movie which should really be awesome, if these songs hadn’t been used a hundred other times in a hundred other films. Sometimes it almost feels like the film is afraid to let the audience experience silence so they just panic and throw a generic rock song up on screen in hopes that it will stick or at least distract.
Overall, the film has some good and some bad to it: the tone is muddled as it's trying to be too many things all at once: funny, yet serious, colourful, yet dark; never quite strikes the correct balance. It's not as bad as Batman V Superman, but also, it's not the course correction that Warner Brothers may have been hoping for.
Suicide Squad gets Two and a Half out of Five Stars (or Two and a Half out of Five meth-fuelled love child's of an androgynous rock star and pimp-inspired stereotypes)
