Perhaps it was because my expectations had been so lowered. The reviews for Suicide Squad were almost relentlessly negative. People just seemed to hate it. Maybe folks had staked so much belief that it would somehow make up for the mess that was Batman vs. Superman that no film could possibly have lived up to it. I dunno. All I was sure about was that it was likely going to suck. That the story would be incomprehensible, the performances phoned in, the directing indifferent.
Instead what I got was a perfectly fine superhero–or more accurately supervillain as hero–movie. A big adventure where a modern day magnificent seven has to ride to the rescue against yet another supervillain who seems determined to rip a hole in the sky with some sort of energy force beam and end the world.
Is it brilliantly original? No. Does it raise the bar on comic book movies? No. Will it change anyone’s life? No.
Was it entertaining? Hëll yes.
Writer/director David Ayer has given us two hours of what may well be the best DC Comics movie since The Dark Knight. We are introduced in the first act to the film’s reluctant protagonists, all jailed in a hëll hole and eventually extricated by Amanda Waller to form a first-strike team against super powered threats. It should be noted that Waller has turned up previously in several different dramatic incarnations, but Viola Davis leaves them all behind. Her Waller is without question the scariest individual in the film: manipulative, cold blooded, putting the “less” in “merciless.” Waller enlists Colonel Rick Flag (a stoic Joel Kinnaman) and Katana (an intense Karen Fûkûhárá) to lead the heroes (?) against the threat of an unleashed Enchantress, who happens to double as Flag’s main squeeze, June Moon (Cara Delevingne). Ayer tries the best he can to give us character moments threaded through the remarkably simplistic plot, and it works as well as it can when you have that many characters to introduce in one movie. Will Smith is the nominal leader, Deadshot, who has a weak spot: the requisite daughter on loan from Ant-Man. Also gloriously demented is Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, as devoted to her puddin’, the Joker (Jared Leto in full loon) as she was in the animated series. Strutting around with a baseball bat, she has most of the best lines, puncturing pretensions while clearly enjoying herself. But the real standout is Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, the villain who wins the most tragic backstory competition and captures your attention whenever his tatted self is on screen.
Again, it’s not the most perfect movie. Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) could have been excised from the film entirely and not missed in the slightest since he contributes exactly zero to the plot. Nevertheless, the film accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: Take up 120 minutes of your time as an entertaining summer diversion.
And boy, did the trailer for Wonder Woman rock.
PAD
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Thank you for this review! I have hesitated seeing the movie because of all the negativity. I look forward to seeing it now!
“the requisite daughter on loan from Ant-Man” lol. Good and fair write up.
To be fair, while it does parallel AntMan, Lawton’s kid is from the Deadshot in the comics…..
I enjoyed the movie, but wish they had used a bit of the structure of The Dirty Dozen and had a specific, very important mission that this group needed to be recruited to handle. Maybe something all the “good guy” metahumans had refused to do? Something.
Also, the tweak to the Joker’s relationship with Harley IMHO drained her of pathos.
I haven’t seen it yet but John Ostrander’s review was fairly glowing. Not surprisingly he has an interest in seeing it succeed. He also gave Viola Davis highest marks, which intrigues me since I don’t think Waller has been handled correctly since Justice League Unlimited. And on a side note, I was never all that satisfied with The Dark Knight. I felt they completely missed the point with Bruce Wayne when he fell apart after Rachel’s death.
When some friends asked me if the movie was good I said, “I’m not sure, but it was fun.” I agree with pretty much everything you’re saying here, with some minor quibbles.
Prior to the New 52 reboot of the DC universe, Deadshot did have a daughter that people tried to use against him in his Secret Six days. My love for that comic may have made me more forgiving of that plot element. The association with Ant-Man never occurred to me.
IIRC, Ayer wrote the movie as well as directing it, so I’m not sure how much of a pass he gets for “doing as much as he can with the plot.” However, I have no idea how much influence the Studio has over that aspect, so I may be totally off-base there.
Finally…you had a Wonder Woman trailer? There wasn’t one in my theater last Thursday. I’m jealous.
It’s okay. Worth a look. Certainly better than Batman v. Superman.
Thanks for mentioning Jay Hernandez. I also thought he was a very interesting character that I’d not heard of before. Was Diablo made just for the movie?
I agree about Captain Boomerang, even though I enjoyed Jai Courtney’s performance, what there was of the role. I think that Katana and Killer Croc similarly were non-entities that contributed nothing.
My biggest complaint is Jared Leto’s Joker. Ugh. Just terrible. On the plus side, I liked Affleck a lot more in this movie than the previous one.
By the way, where were all the other superheroes? This wasn’t really a mission that required the squad, other than Waller’s rescue.
Diablo is from the New 52 Suicide Squad series.
Would that be dámņìņg with faint praise, or praising with faint dámņš?
Didn’t see a Wonder Woman trailer in my theater, however there IS an additional scene in the close credits that people will want to stay in their seats to watch. No spoilers here, but it sets up a later movie, I am sure.
This is what I thought about the movie:
It was decent. It wasn’t as bad as some of the reviews have been hammering the movie with. But it wasn’t a home run movie for DC/Warner Bros either.
A lot of the best stuff you can see in the trailers that were released. And if you take out the DC supervillains aspect, the movie isn’t much different than any other action film.
That said, there were some things that I loved about it. First and foremost is Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. Talk about a star making turn. She is outstanding in the role, just nailed it so dámņ perfectly in playing this batshit crazy lunatic woman. She had so many winning lines it is hard to keep track of them all.
Will Smith as Deadshot was fantastic. It is easily one of his best roles. He gives the character weight that the script didn’t necessarily always have there for him. Also, there’s a few scenes where he is hilariously funny without even trying to be.
Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman and Jay Hernandez were excellent as Amanda Waller, Rick Flag and Diablo. I do wish they’d done more with Katana though.
But, Killer Croc was a total waste and to be honest, the character as a whole didn’t work for me at all. What works in the comics did not translate well to the screen. Captain Boomerang was a cliché, which is to be expected but he wasn’t even a good cliché. And the villain of the story was so freaking lame as to be a constant distraction from the rest of the goings on.
As for the Joker, despite him not being central to the plot of the story, advance hype made it seem like he was. Relatively sidelined, despite the showy and bravura work from Jared Leto, his was a wasted appearance.
I’d love to see another film but I think they need to have a more interesting script and perhaps less characters to focus on. And by all means, they have to bring back Robbie and Smith.
Overall, I gave it a 7 out of 10.
The final edit was shopped out to the company that did the trailers.
That’s the final edit starting from the studio’s cut, which, itself, was very different from the director’s cut.
Great to know, thanks — Katherine’s been gung-ho to see it, and this makes me think it might be worth it. (Will an about-to-be-12-year-old be okay with it violence-wise and “creepiness”-wise, do you think?)
Yes, absolutely.
PAD
Great; thanks again.
Warner Brothers more than adequately succeeded in convincing me that this movie is not for me. Between what appears to be Generic Will Smith Action Character rechristened as Deadshot, a nigh-unrecognizable Harley Quinn, (insert standard “Hot Topic/Juggalo Joker comment here), and the same overall problems that I have with the current state of the franchise’s shared universe, I just can’t muster any enthusiasm for it.
If the Wonder Woman trailer is the same one from SDCC, it, too, leaves me cold.
What’s so disappointing is that, as a reader who’s definitively preferred DC’s books to Marvel’s for some 36-ish years, I should be jumping for joy that some of these movies I’ve wanted to see made since my childhood (or, in the case of the Squad, young adulthood) are seeing the light of day. But, the decisions being made by WB just turn me off.
So, I’m holding off and staying away from the DC-based movies, at least until after Justice League, when the Geoff Johns-helmed course corrections start taking hold. (And even then, I’ll be avoiding any with Affleck in them. My reaction to his work across the board, not just as Batman-in-name-only, is a deal-breaker for me.)
I’d love to love this franchise, but so far, they’re just not making movies that I want to see. Here’s hoping for the future.
–Daryl
Good to see this review. A couple of my friends who have seen it have liked it (both also liked BATMAN V SUPERMAN). I’m going to see it tomorrow.
And it’s good to know that Margot Robbie is perfect as Harley Quinn and that Will Smith nails it as Deadshot. After hearing all of the moans and groans about “PC casting” when it came to Smith playing Deadshot, to read that he’s amazing in the role brings a smile to my face.
I got home from this a bit ago. I actually fell asleep and missed most of the battle with the giant monster, perhaps the least interesting villain since GREEN LANTERN’S Parallax.
While there were a few good bits (Smith, Robbie, Davis), this was a pretty tedious and pointless waste of 2 hours.
Oh good! I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this but it sounds like Viola Davis has taken some of her HTGAW Murder character with her.
8)
This movie was sold as a wild, insane mesh of Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool. Instead, it turned out surprisingly and disappointingly tame. The movie had to repeatedly tell us these are the bad guys because we never actually saw them do anything bad. For example, Deadshot. What did he do that was bad in this movie? He got into a couple of little fights with some corrupt prison guards. And in a flashback he shot one guy (who was a criminal). And … that’s it. The rest of the movie he’s shooting monsters and talking about his daughter. And you could make the same case for everyone else, except maybe Amanda Waller. These are the nicest, sweetest, most tragic group of bad guys ever assembled.
The movie also suffered from a vague, bland villain and too many characters to keep track of. Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc and Katana all should have been left out, leaving more time for Rick Flagg and the Joker.
I agree with you entirely about El Diablo. I love the sense that his power is a thing separate from him, that he doesn’t know its nature or his own. Jay Hernandez did a great job.
My issues with the film: editing, for one, was atrocious. Oddly, a lot of the scenes they sold the movie with in the trailer were cut from the final draft of the film, or altered.
There’s a curious lack of super-powered individuals for a team that Waller intends to use to take on super-human threats. You’ve got El Diablo, Croc, and…I guess Katana’s magic sword, but she worked for the government already. Also, while I love Harley Quinn and think Margot Robbie did a great job portraying her, what’s Harley doing here? She’s not a weapons expert, she’s not super-powered (unless being dangerous and unstable is a super-power). She kicks ášš, yes (to a degree that doesn’t really make sense, given that she’s an ex-psychiatrist who’s fixated on the Joker, which really shouldn’t impart her any special skills). It doesn’t really make sense to put her on a team like the Suicide Squad unless you just want Harley on the Suicide Squad. It would have made more sense to cut Harley and give more time to, say, Katana, and let Capt. Boomerang be the token crazy, but then I guess there’d be no reason to have the Joker show up.
Still, a fun movie. Hardly the best film of it’s kind, but a good time at the movie theater. I still kinda wish the rumors had been true and Nightwing had shown up, though.
“Writer/director David Ayer has given us two hours of what may well be the best DC Comics movie since The Dark Knight.”
This sentence could be entirely true and entirely compatible with every single negative review of the movie at the same time.
Got to admit, its nice to hear someone not dumping on this movie/DC Movie Universe in general. I haven’t seen it yet, but I am looking forward to seeing it, and I’m pretty sure I will enjoy it (hëll, even with all of its problems, I still enjoyed Batman vs Superman).
I guess as I get older I’m just not as inclined to judge a movie as harshly as others; if I took the time out of my day to see it (and the money), I’m pretty sure I’ll get something out of a movie that I can enjoy, no matter what others might say.
That being said, I do hope they do an ‘Ultimate” version of this movie as well, maybe with all of the Joker scenes restored (I’ve heard a lot of Leto’s scenes were cut).
Good review, and on point. I was one of the ones who enjoyed BvS in the theatres, warts and all. Imperfect in classical film making terms, but no more so than a typical dynamic DC or Marvel graphic novel,which tend to be compilations of story arcs gathered from the publications in which they appeared. It worked for me 90 percent of the time and found the tale epic. The imperfections were over spoken , really, and it seems tht the substance of the anti-DC complaints for both BvS comes down to little more than
they are not trying hard enough to duplicate the style and success of Marvel movies. What DCEU is doing is quite deliberately offering up another way to make super hero movies,and the difference in DC films is refreshing. Suicide Squad is not, in my view, the best of the DCEU releases so far–Man of Steel is nearly perfect in that regard–but it is watchable, compulsively so, a brash, rash, loud and smashing caper that careens wildly, characters who hate each other fighting reluctantly toward a common goal and succeeding just barely. It is anti Marvel style, something that’s been sorely needed for teh genre. It is something than what we’ve had so far in terms of comic book movies. Critics composing ersatz philosophies of art as they fuss budget over what they take as sins against art be dámņëd. Suicide Squad was a gas.
Thumbs up on this review! I also liked the film very much–no, it isn’t perfect, but I had a blast watching it. And Margot Robbie is proof that God exists. 🙂
And I agree that some of the bile comes from those who want DC to replicate Marvel’s style. What for? If DC did that then the same screamers would complain anyway. Two different companies, two different styles. What is so difficult about that?
Speaking only for myself, I don’t want the DC-based movies to (necessarily) mimic what Marvel Studios is doing. But, it seems to me that in their clear push to be NotMarvel, they’re either forgetting or refusing to be DC.
–Daryl
While watching, I thought that someone at WB finally watched the Marvel movies, and realized that character matters. (And unicorns.)
And they finally hired a cinematographer who can go out in the daytime, and cleaned the grit from their lens. (Which is funny, since it was probably a darker and grittier movie than the rest. But at least the physical representation actually matched the tone, instead of being comedic excess.)
My big problem is that Waller’s speech changed the rationale for the Suicide Squad from “We need disposable metahumans to do things that a ‘superhero’ wouldn’t do” to “we need controllable metahumans because we can’t guarantee that the next Superman won’t fight against America.”
Which is an acceptable rationale in itself, but you don’t then put together a squad that consists of Guy Who Shoots Things With Guns, Hits Things With Hammer Woman, and Boomerang Jáçkášš. It’s kind of a flaw that at least three members of the Squad are basically just more competent versions of the soldiers accompanying them.
I liked the movie for the most part. Something that didn’t make sense was how Harley is so skilled in martial arts…But that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t really like the villain(s). Too obscure and confusing. Also not sure how I feel about Wonder Woman next summer… By the looks of the trailer, it just doesn’t seem to be too exciting. I hope to be proven wrong though.
I thought it was racist. I thought it was sexist.
Yes, a number of people have said that. And when I ask why, the answers are always slanted BS that have nothing to do with the actual film and everything to do with the biases of the viewer.
PAD
Thanks man. I found someone else that liked this movie. Sometimes I think I’ve gone crazy.
I saw it today. Writer/director David Ayer did a great job of setting up the premise, and the backstories about seven characters, which is no mean feat. The dialogue is sharp, the tone is just the right balance between darkness and levity, the characters are well-served by the stars playing them, and by the script, which has them acting true to their established natures, the Joker is in the film for just the right amount of screen time (in stark contrast to one of the criticisms I’ve heard leveled at the film), and the whole thing wraps up fairly well. I’m glad it’s doing well at the box office.
Seriously, though, I’ve heard some harsh criticisms of review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes lately, and while no website or system can be perfect, I can think of no better example than this film’s 27% RT rating to underline this point, and the need to take others’ opinions with a grain of salt.
Excellent review.
Personally I am always some what hesitant to watch superhero/villain movies (except for deadpool). I feel that miss the mark on more than a few points. On Suicide Squad I was fifty-fifty. After reading this and a few other more objective reviews it might be worth a watch.
But what did you think of ST: Beyond? I’m surprised you haven’t given us your opinion of that.
First time caller, long time listener. I enjoyed the Suicide Squad film it was about 3.5/5 some more background on the minor characters could have been a good idea, but on the whole it worked well and thought Will Smith was terrific as Deadshot. The Joker storyline was great making him all gangster.
P.S. Peter will there be anymore Star Trek: New Frontier I just finished The Returned series and loved it?