#365DaysOfWriting — Day Ninety-One
Suicide Squad
Let me get one thing off my chest immediately — Suicide Squad is a much better movie than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. There are better performances, a better story, a killer soundtrack and more importantly, it doesn’t take itself as seriously as Batman v Superman did. It’s a comic book movie — and for most part, it stayed at that.
It’s not as bad as the critics suggest. It’s not as great as the fanboys suggest either.
That’s where an opportunity was lost — in the fight to be its own movie, to ‘please’ the fans and to ‘please’ the producers, Suicide Squad as a whole ends up being a middling film, when it had potential to be a truly great, eclectic, genre-defining film. Does it mean that it wasn’t enjoyable? Hell no! It is by far the best film of the 3 the DCEU have put out so far. I did like Man of Steel (it had great moments), but in hindsight, with the arrival of Batman v Superman, that seems like a flash-in-the-pan for Snyder.
Anyway, we’re talking about David Ayer’s film now.
Suicide Squad starts off like a breeze. It gets straight to the point, and we’re introduced to two of the most impressive members of the squad, and its impressive leader.
Viola Davis channels an even darker version of her Annalise persona from How To Get Away With Murder to play Amanda Waller to perfection — come to think of it, a fantastic casting decision by DC.
Will Smith, who I was skeptical about when he was announced as Deadshot, channels all his superstardom and cool-guy persona to give us a very different, yet effective Floyd Lawton. My only gripe is they humanised him a bit too much.
And what do we say about the dazzling, the beautiful, the gorgeous and definitely bonkers Harley Quinn? She seems like she was born for the role! Not since Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight have I seen a DC character portrayed with such intensity — and you can see that she’s also having a WHOLE lot of fun. She is the Joker’s moll, after all.
But that’s about it with the well-played characters of this film.
Here’s the middle of the pack: Boomerang has some good lines, but doesn’t have much else to do. Katana is intense, but again, is hidden behind loads of sword-swishing action. El Diablo has one really fantastic sequence in the climax, but again, is just brooding through most of the film. Croc is too gangsta to be horrifying or intimidating, but he does try. Slipknot slips by without anyone ever noticing (why was he even there?) , and Rick Flagg is annoying for most part.
Together, though, they work well as a team because of the 3 stars I mentioned up above.
Sadly, the film has a number of faults.
Since I’ve been talking about the Squad and the characters, let me round off that discussion with the guys who disappointed.
Enchantress may have enchanting eyes, but she stuck out like a sore thumb throughout the movie. Her romantic angle with Rick Flagg was grating and affected the pace of the film, A LOT. CGI makes her look good, and the climax gives us a really great look at her powers, but Cara Delevingne just doesn’t cut it as a 6,000-year-old evil witch. And she’s supposed to be the most powerful of the squad.
Joker, or Mistah J, or Puddin’, or whatever that sweet munchkin calls him, isn’t exactly himself. All the news of Jared Leto’s ‘method acting’, ‘staying in character’, ‘scaring other cast members’ basically makes me feel he was more of a Joker off set than on camera. There’s also the fact that a number of his scenes were cut, so to give him benefit of the doubt, he wasn’t given a fair chance to showcase his version of the Joker. I was even excited when he used to do the Joker voice at concerts before the release of the film, but it’s almost as if he’s just left all of that out. Leto plays a convincing mob boss, but not a convincing Joker one bit. Hopefully we get to see more of him in upcoming DC movies, but whatever little I saw of him here, I wasn’t convinced. There are some beautiful comic book references here though, involving Joker and Harley — and I’ll leave that for you to find out when you watch the film!
The editing is bizarre, yet again. WB/DC really needs to hire better editors OR not allow studio executives to cut their own versions of the film. It just ruins everything. And in this case, it ruined the second half the film almost entirely after setting up the first beautifully. This also leads me to talk about…
The final act was just plain silly. I cannot divulge much for fear of spoiling the film, but let me just say that they could’ve taken this film in a completely different direction. The humanisation of Floyd Lawton, as I mentioned earlier, wasn’t really necessary (but it also helped give him a complete arc).
There are definitely great moments in the film, though.
You SHOULD watch this one in the theatres. It is an enjoyable film, above all, and as I said, it didn’t venture into the territory of taking itself too seriously. Some of the humour in this ‘dark’ setting seems forced, but it’s not as bad as the critics would have you believe. The soundtrack is A+ (one of the best of the year, if not THE best) and helps the film even through its patchy editing. There are great cameos and generous references sprinkled through the film, and that makes it thoroughly enjoyable for a DC Comics fan.
