Movie Reaction: Suicide Squad

Formula: (Guardians of the Galaxy * Deadpool) / Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

It sure is hard to be surprised by something like Suicide Squad. It's a major D.C. superhero movie and those don't take anyone by surprise. Every bit of casting and production news is reported. People lose their minds over talk of reshoots. Trailers and stills from the set are dissected like the Zapruder film. Think pieces are written about character representations before anyone has even seen it. And, right now, the D.C. modus operandi is "while this movie may be disappointing, the next one will be great". After Man of Steel underwhelmed, Batman v. Superman was going to fix all woes. When BvS cracked under the pressure of too many big names, it was the misfits of Suicide Squad who would have the freedom to make the most out of that cinematic universe. It's a promise of delayed gratification that puts a lot of pressure on the next movie. It's impossible for any movie to succeed under that kind of microscope stuck in that kind of hype machine.

So, no, Suicide Squad didn't blow me away. It couldn't. And that's fine.

The idea is simple enough. After Superman's powers scare the bejeezus out of everyone, a high ranking government agent, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), assembles a group of bad guy metahumans (aka Supervillains) as a contingency plan for when problems get too difficult for regular people to handle. The film introduces the Squad through a series of voice-over flashbacks followed by checking in on their current incarceration.

• Deadshot (Will Smith), a hit man who never misses and only cares his daughter he never gets to see.
• Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former psychiatrist who went insane after falling for the Joker (Jared Leto) while he was in Arkham Asylum.
• Boomerang (Jai Courtney), a jewel theif who, uh, throws things really well.
• Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a reformed gang member who is a human torch.
• Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a man/crocodile creature.

They are led by a special ops solider, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Flag's girlfriend is a cursed metahuman called the Enchantress (Cara Delevigne). Well, one day, the Enchantress goes crazy and the Suicide Squad is assembled for the first time to stop her. They have to learn to work as a team despite not being teammate material. Oh, and this whole time, the Joker is trying like hell to reunite with Harley Quinn. The basic structure is one that you've seen dozens of times (Team assembles and races toward a thing that's going to destroy the world). The details of the story are gibberish (Something about Enchantress building a machine to destroy humans because humans used to pray to her but now pray to machines). If you want to get bogged down in the story, it's easy to hate the movie. It's full of plot holes, cheesy moments, lack of payoff, and unearned sentimentality. It's not a great movie and I won't pretend it is.

They sure cast well though.

Two movies keep coming to mind when I think about Suicide Squad. One is Deadpool. Had Deadpool already made $363 million when Suicide Squad was in pre-production, you better believe this would've had an R-release. Given the characters and the overall aesthetic, there's probably a better movie in here if it was able to lean in to all the anarchy and nastiness for an R-rating. Instead, it's Guardians of the Galaxy that comes more to mind. That was another motley crew of renegades with characters only known to the comic book die-hards. The story in that movie was beside the point. The characters made that movie and the same is true of Suicide Squad. Will Smith is Will Smith. I love Will Smith, so I liked Deadshot a lot. He and Harley Quinn are definitely the leads of the group. Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn is worth all the build up. She the breakout character of the movie, which should be a surprise to no one. She really sinks her teeth into that role. There's a great mix of malice and innocence to the character. She either doesn't care or doesn't know any better and the movie isn't interested in clarifying which it is. Diablo is the next most built up character and Jay Hernandez makes the best impression of any of the actors I didn't already know well. Viola Davis nails her role. In a movie full of villains, Davis as Amanda Waller is the biggest badass of them all. She may have the most long term usefulness in the DCU of anyone from the movie. Jared Leto's Joker is memorable and different than any other depiction of the character. He needs more time to be fleshed out, but what I saw looked good. That's an issue with most of the cast actually. The cast is too big to give everyone a proper arc. That would bother me more if this was meant as a stand-alone, but it looks like there will be plenty of opportunities to focus on the Killer Crocs and Boomerangs of the world later.

Another reason I bring up Guardians is the music. Suicide Squad has a lot of musical cues and I don't know whether I liked that or not. The songs, anything from Queen to Eminem, all fit the moments they were selected for. They didn't really fit together though. The best theme I could determine was "the most obvious choice"*. It's not a big part of the movie, but you'd think that if someone was that interested in using music that much, they would be interested in curating it a little more consistently. This is a pretty small point in the scheme of things though. I just noticed it, then couldn't stop noticing it.

*It is worth giving them credit for not using Don't Stop Believin' earnestly or ironically.

Is Suicide Squad "26% on Rotten Tomatoes" bad? No. Is it being severely underrated by the critical community? No. Is it an entertaining enough 2 hours that establishes characters that I'd happily see more of? Absolutely.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend