I saw Suicide Squad. There are spoilers within this review, so if you don’t want to read them, don’t read the review. Also, I review movies based on whether or not they’re worth the money to see them, which is variable based on when you go, and where you see it, and the time to watch it, which is, sadly, constant and in increasingly short supply as you become more of an adult.
The TL;DR
It’s a pretty good summer movie, but there’s a better movie that you can almost see in the shadow of what is on the screen.
Though I was always a Marvel kid growing up, I haven’t read comics in forever, and I’m loving a lot of the DC television stuff, so I don’t think I’m horribly biased. Suicide Squad is a perfectly acceptable summer popcorn flick. It’s not Deadpool, it’s not The Avengers or Captain America: Civil War, but then again, it’s also not Man of Steel*, so it has that going for it. Probably around a 6.5 out of 10. Good enough to watch, probably not something you’ll go back to again and again.
The Review Proper
The good
Will Smith is fantastic. He’s always charismatic and charming, and I really can’t think of a movie where I thought he made it worse. He even made Wild, Wild West better when you saw him on screen. He’s just effortlessly likable. The worst complaint that anyone could have is that it’s Will Smith being “Humorous Charming Action-Hero” Will Smith and not Deadshot. Which is, I suppose, a bit of a legitimate complaint, but he’s still entertaining. He plays the character with charm and ease but there’s definitely some characterization that he brings to the role.
Margot Robbie is great a Harley Quinn. Sure, the movie does frame certain shots in ways that focus on her body. And yes, the argument that she’s playing a character who uses her sexuality as a weapon to throw people off guard is a little bit of a problem in that it more or less allows for a certain exploitative view of the character. However, the way she plays the role isn’t bad. That being said, I think there’s a problem in how the character is written. But more on that later.
Viola Davis is awesome. Again, there are problems with some of the writing that requires her to carry a pretty big idiot ball, but it’s not like she could have changed that as an actor. She makes you think that Amanda Waller will do whatever she thinks it takes to get the job done. Between her, Smith, and Robbie, they carry the movie, with, to a slightly lesser extent, Jay Hernandez, who plays El Diablo.
Jarod Leto’s Joker is there. He’s not terrible. I think he could have been used to greater effect, and there’s a lot of wasted potential there. More on that later as well. I think he basically looked at Heath Ledger’s performance and knew that he couldn’t go that way at all. Everyone would have compared the two and it wouldn’t have worked at all. So he went an entirely different direction. He more or less rolled with the crazy for the character. He took him over the top in a different way, and it worked well enough.
The action sequences are serviceable, bordering on good in places. There’s a great scene where Smith’s Deadshot shows off why he’s a very dangerous man, and it’s pretty awesome. They manage to make the rest of the squad look at least somewhat reasonably competent. The effects are reasonably good. They’re not amazing, but at this point, amazing effects are hard to pull off. We, as viewers, are so accustomed to having effects in movies and TV shows just be great that you only notice when they’re terrible.
The Bad
Slipknot could have never been in the movie and no one would have missed him. In fact, it would have been a better movie for it. Captain Boomerang didn’t need to be in the movie. Katana needed about 10 more minutes of screen time to make anyone care about her, and she never got it. Killer Croc needed about 10 more minutes of screen time, or even 5 with some lines. Neither Katana nor Croc got the development they needed and so they were just cardboard cutouts. With so little time on screen, there’s no way anyone could have made those roles into something, and there’s definitely a totally unearned moment where they try to make you feel sympathetic toward Katana and it just falls so flat.
The biggest problem, and here’s the biggest spoilers, is that the central plot is just stupid. Enchantress is held hostage by Waller who has Enchantress’s heart. Of course, she also has Enchantress’s brother trapped in an idol which she leaves totally unguarded instead of, you know, guarding it like she does the heart. So this, of course, leaves Enchantress completely open to betray her and become the big bad. It’s terrible because it makes Amanda Waller be an idiot.
Worse, when she realized that Enchantress has betrayed her, her recourse is to stab the heart with a pen or something. If she’s such an 11-dimensional chess wizard, why isn’t the “destroy heart immediately” option something that, you know, destroys the heart immediately? Instead, she has to stab it ineffectually with a pen until Enchantress gets her brother to keep her alive with his power. It’s just stupid.
Aside from that, it also leans into the seriously annoying crutch of “Superpowered protagonists sow their own conflict” cliche. It’s Tony Stark making Ultron all over again. The stakes are too high. If Enchantress isn’t stopped, then she’ll destroy the world, and so Batman and Wonder Woman are...nowhere to be found. The Suicide Squad should be used for things that the government can’t be involved in. Not metahuman cleanup.
A much better movie would have been the squad going after Joker after he escaped. Maybe Argus (the CIA/NSA hybrid that Waller runs) doesn’t want to admit he’s out (maybe because he escaped due to blackmailing someone important or something like that), so they send the Squad after him. Now, you have genuine stakes that make sense. You have built in Pathos - will Harley stay loyal to Mr. J? You can play that relationship like it is in the cartoons where it started - Joker doesn’t respect or care for Harley. Harley can have a character arc that empowers her when she finds acceptance with the Squad and realized that Joker has always treated her horribly. Or, perhaps, subvert that expectation, and leave it in place for the Batman movie that’s coming.
Or, perhaps, you need the Squad to go to some other country that the U.S. government can’t acknowledge that they’re meddling in. Maybe Russia, China, North Korea or Madeupia have started experiments to create their own metahuman army. The Squad can go in, after all, they’re bad guys who can be disavowed, and they can do what no one else can. If you want Joker to be in the movie, you can either keep the subplot of him trying to spring Harley, or you can have him competing with the Squad to steal the secrets from the lab.
*My brief review of Man of Steel is this: it was so bad, I can’t imagine seeing BvS. It completely misunderstands who Superman is. Grant Morrison did the perfect Superman in 5 panels. He’s Grant Freaking Morrison, and Man of Steel had Zack “Let’s have some by shooting Jimmy Olsen in the head” Snyder, but come on! In fact, save yourself some pain. Buy All Star Superman, by Grant Morrison, in any format. Read it. Ignore that BvS happened.
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