Suicide Squad Will Leave You Wanting To Live
Well, at least for 15-plus months until Justice League comes out. In just a few Easter Eggs and quick appearances out of 2 hours and 10 minutes of movie, David Ayer has created a better lead-in to Nov. 2017’s Justice League than 3 hours of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
And that says almost nothing about the movie Suicide Squad itself. So below is my spoiler-free review, with no reference to anything more than you could have seen in any of the trailers or commercials.
As you probably know, Suicide Squad tells the story of the team of DC Comics villains who have been recruited into a deep cover black ops team that the government can disavow or even kill off if needed. The government comes in the form of Amanda Waller, who runs the agency Argus, and she is played with ruthless menace by an excellent Viola Davis.
The Squad
The bulk of the story hangs on Deadshot (Will Smith) and of course Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). Smith does a solid job, with pathos and humor, but Robbie steals — appropriately enough — the show. Her take on Harley’s voice pays tribute to the squeaky New York accent of the original Harley Quinn from Batman: The Animated Series, Arleen Sorkin. Jared Leto as The Joker is also very strong, and the only criticism I’ve seen online — that he isn’t crazy enough — is off the mark. Leto’s Joker is completely looney tunes.
The rest of the actors that make up the Suicide Squad do solid jobs, including Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Katana (Karen Fukuhara), Slipknot (Adam Beach), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Surprising to me was Jai Courtney’s take on Captain Boomerang. I’ve always wanted to like his acting and pretty much never have, but his version of the weasley Aussie is all kinds of fun.
Alas, Cara Delevingne as June Moone/Enchantress is jarringly bad when put up against her fellow actors. Her romantic relationship isn’t believable, and her acting as the Enchantress is so over the top that it stands out like a sore thumb. There is one scene where she is supposed to be swaying as she casts a powerful spell (pretty commonplace, right?) and it comes off looking like a twelve-year old girl trying to dance like a stripper. Very out of place in an otherwise tense scene full of threat and menace.
The plot is hampered by providing us with no knowledge of some pretty major elements, such as what the big bad destructive plot device actually is, how it is made and why it is where it is located. It is the most McGuffinesque of McGuffins. But Suicide Squad doesn’t need us to know these things (as much as I want to know), it only needs us to know how the squad deals with them.
There are moments when the CGI looks like it is at least two generations behind the times. One bit of aerial action looks like it was intended for the first Spider-Man movie — from 2002.
Squad Goals
But those issues aside, for the most part Suicide Squad is a fast, fun action movie, with solid team dialogue and interaction. And it does something that has until now only been seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — it pretty much assumes that you know who these characters are. And that you have seen Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice already.
Yes, DC has finally given up on the idea that a comic book movie has to make perfect sense to someone not a comic book fan. No more Christopher Nolan style “realistic” hero. Crazy stuff happens because of crazy powerful people with crazy special abilities.
Sure, the motivation for the team of villains doing the work of heroes is paper thin for most of them aside from Deadshot and Diablo — in some cases boiling down to nothing more than “sounds like fun!” But if I wanted deep, believable character motivation I’d be watching an Ang Lee film, and we all know how his foray into comic book movies turned out. Ayer, who wrote and directed Suicide Squad, also wrote and directed End of Watch and Fury, and wrote Training Day and directed Street Kings. The only place that sort of street level realism is on display in Suicide Squad is in the interaction between Flag and his non-powered military squadmates, former Rangers and SEALs — OK, at times there is a bit of Denzel Washington from Training Day in Will Smith’s portrayal of Deadshot. But there is just as much Jim West from Wild Wild West.
I can recommend Suicide Squad, but only strongly recommend it if you are a comic book fan. More so, if you are a DC comics fan specifically. If you are not a fan of or at all knowledgeable about comic book movies, you will likely be lost in Suicide Squad, bewildered by the super fast tours through the back stories of how these criminals were caught.
However, that same rapid-fire flashback structure makes the first 15 minutes of the movie an almost non-stop array of comic book Easter Eggs and surprises for DC Entertainment Universe (DCEU) fans — and one incredibly long commercial for the awesome soundtrack. Seriously, this movie jumps from one piece of fun music to another faster than a VH-1 “Top 100 of the ‘80s” show — at times distractingly so.
Oh, and stick around for a mid-credits scene that is worth your time — if you are a DCEU fan.
Suicide Squad (PG-13, Warner Bros.) 4 out of 5 stars.
