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.

A rushed script & terrible production can't be saved, despite the best efforts of the cast & crew - Suicide Squad review by TB

On paper, this looked like a riot. A superhero film of baddies, blackmailed and forced to take on a supernatural villain, with a director in David Ayer who has made some great films before. Plus, there was no 12A/PG-13 requirement from the studio to censor the film, such as in the case of The Expendables 3, to ruin things. And finally, there was the most incredible cast, including Will Smith, Jared Leto, Viola Davis & Margot Robbie. What could go wrong?

It turns out, a lot.

Unfortunately, it would have taken a miracle for this film to not have been a total and utter mess. The behind-the-scenes/production troubles have since become legendary, the main one being that the entire tone of the script/film had to be changed 6 weeks before shooting started. There was also a change in lead actor from Tom Hardy to Joel Kinnaman due to the delays. And finally, which has resulted in a petition to get the “Ayer Cut,” the studio took over the film editing and released a totally different version of the film than the director wanted.

I have to be honest though, irrelevant of what changes could be made and reshot, I think the film’s problems are far, far bigger. For a start, this isn’t a fun movie. It’s a dark, dank, turgid and glum film, which isn’t helped by the grimy look Ayer decided to give it. Unfortunately, this is another example of the world that Christopher Nolan so brilliantly created in The Dark Knight trilogy being copied over, without the other parts which made those films masterpieces. As much as yes, it wouldn’t work if the sun was always out, to be so dark and dank is also not something that lends itself to the lightness that the film is in many ways wanting to achieve.

The other thing which became so grating after a while was the constant talk from all the characters about how “They are the bad guys.” When the film has to keep reminding you that this is the case, but also is trying to be edgy and fun, it’s not doing its job correctly. It’s like the cast desperately saying to you with perma-grins “We really enjoyed making this. You should be enjoying watching it!”

The narrative choices also affect the cast and performances, especially Jared Leto’s Joker. In the end, for a film which so heavily featured the Joker in its trailers and marketing campaign, his screentime is probably around the 20-minute mark. Leto himself has commented about how upset he was to learn that so many of the scenes he shot got cut. When Leto is on screen, he really is good, but even he cannot surmount the script and narrative issues. Everyone else does their best and there are some great action scenes, especially from Smith. But saying these action stars are good at action scenes is a bit like saying Seabuscuit is a fast horse... We know they can be great, now please give them a good film to act in!

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?