Suicide Squad (2016)

Suicide Squad (2016), directed by David Ayer, written by David Ayer, starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jared Leto

Lazy. That was a word that kept spinning in my head while I was watching Suicide Squad. Lazy is a good word for describing how the movie actually is, as unlike many other comic book movies, even the often bad-mouthed Zak Snyder Superman movie, Suicide Suad lacks energy. It's just lazy, spiritless mush of poorly directed and edited scenes, laced with an unimaginative selection of well-known rock and pop songs.  Not to mention that the movie feels like an overly long pilot episode for a cancelled TV show.

I don't really even care, that the premise of the movie is stupid, even in the realm of comic book movies. Far from it, as with the setting of putting the bad guys do the good guys' job could lead to interesting and fun situations. But here all those scenes that should be overflowing with spunk, all we get is a wet fizzle. We got Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a psychopathic girlfriend of the Joker, who does pretty much nothing interesting besides being a bit quirky. We got Killer Croc (Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who does little more besides grunting. Deadshot (Will Smith) is just moody all the time. The same with Diablo (Jay Hernandez). In the main storyline, no one in this movie is interesting enough to care.

There are side plots, but only for Harley Quinn's case, there's a little interest in it, as we see the Joker (Jared Leto) planning her escape. And Leto is actually good, just as Robbie is. They might actually be the two best characters in the story, too bad they're put in a movie, that just doesn't work that well. Other than them and their abusive love relationship, I had a hard time caring about anyone else's cliched to the max personal issues, like Diablo's, by his hand, dead family or Deadshot's desire to be a good daddy.

The Suicide Squad. There's a lot of them, but I don't really care enough to talk about them. Spoiler, the dude on the left dies almost immediately after he's brought to the story Yay.

The story, as I said, is idiotic to put it nicely. Amanda Weller (Viola Davis) gets a brilliant idea of putting together a squad of criminals, the beforehand mentioned gang of psychopaths and murderers, as she figures out, that if there's ever a need to put a stop on metahumans, who's the better than a gang of borderline uncontrollable psychos. Obviously, the shit hits the fan when the most powerful of these potential saviours of the world, the Enchantress (Cara Delevinge) decides that she, as a sort of semi-immortal being, won't take such shit and starts to build a huge army with her magic powers, aided by her brother.

The titular Suicide Squad is put on the case, as who better to deal with a supernatural threat than a bunch of misfits, who have only one metahuman, Diablo, with them. What ensues is a series of unimaginative battle scenes, badly written dialogue. unemotive characters and finally a confrontation of the main baddie, who doesn't come out any more interesting than the anti-heroes fighting her.

Suicide Squad is very much a prime example of wasted opportunity. They had a chance to make a fun action flick with a group of characters, who don't normally get to save the world. It could have been filled with anarchic action and unconventional heroics with a baddie, who's mesmerised why such a group would even try to oppose her. But no. Nothing of that happens, as the movie itself is a wet blanket. It just takes itself too seriously, like it wouldn't know that it has a premise that is just stupid. It's not something that should be deep or meaningful, it's something that should make you smile and laugh and clap your hands because of how utterly silly and amazing it is at the same time. But it doesn't manage to do that, despite the trailers did promise something like that as a possibility.

So that's Suicide Squad for you. Oh yeah, one of the members of the Suicide Squad is a dude with a fucking boomerang. But that's just stupid stupid, not awesome stupid.

Cameo warning. And Batman has one too. Not that either really helps any.