Suicide Squad (2016)

What do you do when you want to like a movie so much, but you walk out of the theater bored and wanting to just sleep away your problems?

I've never had to ask this question until last night.

I made the always-tragic mistake of putting my hope in some amazingly well-crafted trailers and expected the world with Suicide Squad. Instead, I got a movie that bored me. A movie with some of the greatest comic book villains of all time, and it bored me. I legitimately yawned several times towards the end and was just waiting to get out of the theater so I could do something far more interesting.

I also want to put a bit of a disclaimer before the rest of my thoughts: this is no way because I want to align myself with the critics. If you remember my Batman v Superman review (if you don't, just click here), you'll remember that, despite the negativity critics hurled at it, I quite enjoyed it. It was something far different tonally than anything else any comic book film had given me before, and I appreciated that a lot. I wanted to love Suicide Squad, as did everyone else I saw it with. All of them were equally disappointed, and none of them are critics.

Let's get some good stuff in before I start railing against this film. The best thing about Suicide Squad, hands down, are the performances of Will Smith and Margot Robbie as Deadshot and Harley Quinn, respectably. Smith actually shows some incredible acting chops and brings nuance, depth, and quality to his portrayal of the sharpshooter. He feels incredibly human. Robbie, on the other hand, is anything but human. She is completely and certifiably insane in the best way possible. She is sexy and crazy and quite funny at times, which is exactly what Harley Quinn should be. In addition to those two performances, I really liked how the entire team was assembled and the way that Batman was used for that purpose. There's a lot of flashback sequences that, while they do occasionally distract from the film's narrative, are incredibly well-done and give some nice backstories in a short amount of time.

In fact, my favorite flashbacks were those that involved Harley and the Joker, and they made me want a whole movie dedicated to them. I loved how these sequences developed their respective backstories in this universe so much. Jared Leto as the Joker is generally a highlight of Suicide Squad as well, mostly because it's something we haven't gotten on screen before. His portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime is half ruthless mob boss, half Heath Ledger's schizophrenic maniacal slant from The Dark Knight. While at times he sounded a little too similar to Ledger's take, he's definitely his own thing. I'm going to withhold fully comparing him to Nicholson and Ledger until he's actually the main villain in a film (hopefully in Affleck's solo Batman film) because he's not an incredibly prominent character in Suicide Squad. I'm actually pretty OK with that here, though, because the Joker is allowed to have his own things to do outside of the main plot of Suicide Squad. He's a wild card, and that's a good fit for this version of the character.

Unfortunately, that's about where the good ends for Suicide Squad. There's some really rough performances from some of the main cast, especially Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag. Knowing that Tom Hardy, one of my favorite actors working right now, was originally supposed to be in this role makes me all the more upset that instead of someone great like him we got a plank of wood like Kinnaman. He's honestly quite awful. I don't even know how else to put it.

Also, I feel like outside of Harley and Deadshot, most of the team is wasted at some point or another. Captain Boomerang and El Diablo actually get some nice moments, which is more than can be said for Killer Croc, Katana, or Slipknot. Slipknot is completely wasted, as a matter of fact, and is barely in the movie for five minutes. It's quite clear that this is a Harley and Deadshot movie with some other characters tacked on. I understand that they're the two most essential characters here, but they overwhelm the rest of the film so much. At least they're both really well-portrayed; otherwise Suicide Squad would be a complete waste of time.

The biggest struggle for Suicide Squad, however, is something I never thought would be a problem with this film: balance. Watching the trailers made me feel like Warner Bros. and director David Ayers knew exactly what kind of film they were making. The end result, however, makes me feel otherwise. Batman v Superman knew it was four or five things at once and actually balanced them decently well, even if it felt a little long at times. Suicide Squad, on the other hand, can't decide what on earth it wants to be and doesn't acknowledge it. At times, it's trying to rip off Guardians of the Galaxy with its attempt to be fun by inserting random fun oldies hits with, among other things, its character introductions; at others, it's trying to be a contained action thriller; at still others, it feels like Ghostbusters due to the supernatural and mythical slant of the film's villain; and at even other times, it wants to be a character piece focusing on Deadshot and Harley Quinn and the latter's relationship with the Joker. The fact that that sentence was ridiculously long and hard to follow should tell you a lot about Suicide Squad because that's exactly how it feels to watch this film. It's a complete mess, and that messiness makes it incredibly boring and laborious to watch at times.

I wanted to love Suicide Squad way more than I wanted to love Batman v Superman; yet somehow, I'm left feeling the opposite way. Batman v Superman was underappreciated by most, in my opinion, because it was something different and not quite what people were expecting. I enjoyed how it was different than what I expected. Suicide Squad was also different from my expectations, but it was so in a really bad way. It was boring, disappointing, and draining. I wanted to leave but kept myself as involved as I could because I hoped it could redeem itself. There's some good bits, in particular Harley and Deadshot's characters and the performances behind them, but that's it: just bits and pieces here and there that remind you that someone actually cared for a little bit about making this film.

My recommendation: Skip it, unless you're a DC Extended Universe completist. 

My grade: 30