On Friday, I got the chance to see a film I was highly anticipating after the disappoint that was Batman v Superman. I was really rooting for Suicide Squad, even with all the naysayers calling the film horrible. How can WB and DC screw up two films within the span of 5 months? Seems hard to do. Well, they did it! I don’t know how but they did it.
Suicide Squad was shaping up to be the most unique “superhero” (for lack of a better term) film since Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. It took a group of villains and made them superheroes, which is probably one of the coolest concepts for a movie I have heard in years! The film gave DC the opportunity to show off characters a majority of the mainstream audience doesn’t get to see. Unfortunately, this is by far the most generic movie they could’ve made out of the Suicide Squad property.
The movie's plot revolves around Amanda Waller, a manipulative government agent, creating a task force made solely out of the most dangerous criminals hoping to use them to take on evil forces. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a moment in this movie where I believed that the Suicide Squad could take on the villain in the film, let alone any other super powered entity.
The characters fell flat…
The Joker is so underutilized in this film it’s almost laughable. The focus and hype around The Joker that the trailers pumped out amounted for roughly 4-5 brief scenes showing him off. Even those scenes don’t do him justice, you some glimmers of that Joker he wants to unleash, but it just never fully gets there. It’s not the actor's fault either. The Joker actor, Jared Leto, has confirmed that a large number of scenes he filmed were cut out of the film and has expressed his frustration in interviews.
Suicide Squad claimed a star studded cast, but it never felt like their performances were on par. Will Smith was pretty great, but Margot Robbie felt like she was there to deliver one-liners specifically used for trailers and marketing. Her lines felt so out of place that she didn't seem like Harley Quinn, there were times when the one liners were cringe-worthy. Out of a squad of seven, only Will Smith, Margot Robbie, and Joel Kinnaman felt like they were the only people that bounced well off each other.
A large majority of the squad was wasted and had nothing to do during most of the movie. Some of the squad stood around in action scenes because they are useless additions. These villains were attempted to be humanized with cliche-filled back stories, which were also done poorly. A large majority of these characters aren't done justice, and that goes beyond just the squad.
Enchantress is the villain in this film and she has an incredibly mediocre plan full of worn out tropes from across the genre. I never felt any urgency in trying to stop the villain, it was almost as though the 'three days' she was in power amounted to nothing. For some reason her plans stopped, like she was simply giving time for the squad to catch her and when they do, she doesn't even use her powers.
I barely even knew what I was watching by the time the third act because her plan was so incoherent that I just kept saying to myself "What is happening right now?". It ended with the messiest final fight I have seen in a movie, because most of the characters just stood there and watched because they would be absolutely murdered by the villain if they jumped into the fight.
Was the cinematography, music, or CGI at least good? No…
Before I saw this movie, I heard about all the bad reviews but I went in with an open mind. I expected myself to at least have a fun time and enjoy the stylized filmmaking and great action scenes. Sadly, I was wrong for believing the film would have any of that. This film has absolutely zero style even though the marketing seemed to suggest that it would with the bright, multi-neon colored logo, whacky posters, and artsy character logos. It seemed like this film would bring the style that has been lacking in these DCCU movies. More color, creative filmmaking, etc.
I was really upset to see nothing but orange and black for most of the film. I was waiting for those bursts of color that were seemingly promised in the marketing. The film doesn’t even go to any lengths to do any creative shots or stylized camera work. It’s all very by the numbers and generic. With a veteran crew like the one on Suicide Squad, I expected a lot more but the film is just visually boring to watch. It felt like no effort was put into making this movie look visually appealing.
On another technical aspect, the editing in this film is abysmal. There are many reports that suggest upwards of four people edited this movie (even though only one is credited) and I strongly believe this is the case. The editing is choppy and at times made the film completely incoherent. There are several instances of the editing just ruining moments like a shot that goes into slow motion for what feels like two or three minutes. It is probably the longest slow motion shot I have seen in a while, it is almost comical how long it goes on for. The film puts it in slow motion to build tension but by that time in the film, I was just checking my watch and resting my head on my arm out of boredom.
I would be remiss to ignore the musical choices made for the film. There are so many licensed tracks in this movie it was absurd. Just moments after a licensed song ended, another one would play. Most of the time the songs didn’t fit very well in the movie either, it felt like they were trying to match up with Guardians of the Galaxy and its great, fitting soundtrack but instead the filmmakers just tried to shove licensed tracks in where they could.
The graphics in the film were subpar as well, it was like WB and DC spent so much money on casting and licensing music that they forgot to save some for the special effects. Someone in the production team decided to make a movie that looks like it has the budget of one of the CW DC shows such as The Flash. Some of the CG characters looked like they’re from the early 2000’s when people were still figuring out how to properly implement CG. There is a specific shot of a CG villain in the movie that made me actually go “Oh my god” when I saw it.
Since the film is PG-13, there is a lot of fast and shaky camera work to give the effect that things are happening in front of you but in reality, I was just hearing loud noises and watching that dull, bloodless PG-13 violence. I can only think of one cool action moment in the movie which is in the first major action sequence. The rest is completely forgettable and very cookie cutter. Part of the reason the action is so mediocre is the fact that the cannon fodder enemies are faceless, generic, effortlessly designed creatures that are just walking blobs of black. I had no interest in those enemies and they weren’t a threat to the squad ever, so I just felt bored. The action is just bland and disappointing, I was hoping I could at least walk out of the movie having watched some cool fights happen but alas… I left feeling very empty.
Verdict:
Suicide Squad is a bland, uninspired, generic, uneventful, forgettable, boring, mess of a film. The plot is incoherent, there’s nothing special about it, the writing is poor, there is little passion to be seen or felt in the presentation of the film, it feels lazy, and truthfully, nothing of consequence happens in this movie. You could skip this movie and go right into Justice League and feel like you missed absolutely nothing! This movie will have no impact on the overall DC universe from a plot perspective. So, unless you really have nothing better to do, don’t bother seeing this movie. We can only hope that Justice League will be better than this but who knows, I am starting to be less and less optimistic on these films as time goes on.
