Rent Suicide Squad (2016)

Overblown and overboring - Suicide Squad review by Alphaville

In this bog-standard superhero fare, another bunch of comic book ‘meta-humans’ fight another bunch of super-baddies to a random selection of pop songs. Perhaps one of the most boring of the whole genre. Not a single original idea or iota of intelligence in the whole by-the-numbers waste of screen time. Not even worth watching for the cgi fight scenes, which are an over-edited mess.

Unfortunately, the title of this movie isn't strictly accurate - Suicide Squad review by Count Otto Black

Remember "The Dirty Dozen"? This is the same film in fancy dress, only de-clawed and castrated. In that movie, men who were mostly very bad indeed, and in one case spine-chillingly loathsome, went on a suicide mission to ruthlessly slaughter a bunch of senior Nazi officers (and any civilians who happened to get in the way, including rather a lot of women) in the hope of having their sentences reduced if they survived. Of course, most of them didn't.

Here, we have various allegedly evil people going on a "suicide" mission we know all the remotely interesting characters will survive because they might be needed later in this massive ongoing franchise, therefore they're accompanied by a useless bunch of totally expendable soldiers who might as well be wearing red shirts. They're up against a generic supervillain who wants to rule the world because that's what generic supervillains do, and a horde of mindless crystal zombies who can be smashed to bits with neither accountability nor gore. So, your standard "superheroes vs. far too many robots for far too long" scenario. All of which takes place in a gloomy deserted cityscape that's both visually boring and identical to the way the inevitable computer game will look.

Will Smith is an actor I've never been as impressed by as everyone else seems to be, and as Deadshot, by far the most important character, he totally fails to convince us that he's anyone other than Will Smith doing his default charming wisecracking schtick. There's a token flashback in which he actually kills someone for money, but other than that, there's no evidence whatsoever that he's anything other than a really nice and witty guy who loves his daughter, and just happens to be shooting magic robots with a machine-gun because it's one of those days. Margot Robbie is tremendous fun as a controversially sexed-up Harley Quinn who, alone of all the characters, genuinely seems to be mad, but absolutely nobody is all that evil other than their boss Amanda Waller, a truly horrible person who (not a spoiler at all) is a major ongoing character in the comics so no way is she going to be killed like she so richly deserves. And most of them barely have personalities at all.

In addition to lousy characterization and dimly-lit, badly-choreographed fight-scenes, the plot has holes big enough to fly the Death Star through. For example, it makes sense that the secret service is trying to cover up a terrible mistake by using these covert and expendable operatives instead of calling on real heroes who would obviously be far more effective. But it makes no sense at all that a gigantic glowing vortex in the middle of a major city that has already resulted in massive casualties wouldn't cause people like Batman and Wonder Woman to show up and help with what is obviously a supernatural situation the government is lying about by trying to pin it on terrorists!

I'm giving this one star as a movie overall, plus half a star each for Will Smith's engaging but incredibly miscast performance, and the funny, sexy, crazy Margo Robbie, who actually belongs in this movie. Oh, and a version of the Joker with sightly less charisma than Gollum is in it too for about five minutes. Batman's in it for nearly as long - shouldn't he be on the poster so they can pretend it's about him? He's got to be a bigger attraction than Captain Boomerang.

Will needs some lose change - Suicide Squad review by NC

Another Dirty Dozen film with the endless characters apparently in Marvel Comics. Not sure how healthy the constant violence of all the modern films is for the audience, especially the younger ones. Violence and killing and maiming in a semi-comedy genre can appear acceptable, or even desirable, to the malleable brain.

Batman has been done pretty well over the years. Iron Man was quite fun, but all the spin-offs are getting quite boring. Noisy and massive computer effects, but very little credible story, or dialogue, or acting. Do you really need so many characters at once?

Certainly childish.....doubtful content for children.....and not nearly clever enough for adults like Deadpool...........so what is the point?

Expect makes millions in the States.

Where is Ed Murphy these days?