Suicide Squad review
We should just lower our expectations.
With a rocky start but an entertaining climax, Suicide Squad could have been an average film. Which is fine… right? I would have enjoyed the film to an extent, had a decent time at the cinema, but that’s not enough anymore. Comic book movies are reigning at the box office and are held in high regard by both critics and fans. Suicide Squad had the pressure of living up to that standard, and because of that pressure it failed. Too much was changed and lost in pursuit of likability and lightheartedness.
The first act of this film is a complete mess. The laziness of the exposition is inexcusable. Rather than introducing us to the main characters, we get introduced to Amanda Waller who then tells us about the main characters. The entire exposition contains but a few sentences uttered by the actual members of the suicide squad themselves. And to top it all off the great but incoherent choice of music adds a chaotic feel to the introduction. All the great classic rock songs that the filmmakers could get their hands on are played one after the other like a playlist on shuffle. Sure it sets the mood alright, but hearing an iconic song being cut off just to be followed up by another iconic song is nothing but confusing.
A messy exposition is forgivable if it’s done to keep things short so the plot can get started quickly, but here’s the thing: there was barely any plot. That’s okay though. In fact, I was counting on the plot to be basic, so you can have more time with the many fantastic characters in this film. But despite the simple plot, many characters are given little to no attention and are left underdeveloped. Croc and Katana look like they could have been interesting, were they given a bit of attention. None of the performances were bad and none of the characters were particularly badly written, it’s just that the filmmakers clearly hard trouble juggling the entire suicide squad. But not all characters were abandoned. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn stole the show. Her craziness keeps things light while her bit of humanity shining through adds depth to the character. Will Smith did a fantastic job as Deadshot, Rick Flag was interesting I guess. I was really surprised at how much I cared about Diablo, when he finally gets a chance to do something he turned out to be a really interesting character.
But ultimately, there is one big reason why this film would work and one reason why it doesn’t. It works because it’s pretty, it doesn’t work because it relies on being pretty. The action looks great, the scene transitions are nice, the thing with the colors in the frame is creative and new, the characters look true to the comics (for as far as I know). This however is not enough to base an entire movie on. You need scenes, dialogue, story and characters. None of those things were present, not as much as they should have been. My favorite scene by far is the suicide squad sitting in a bar, talking. Just talking. This shows the characters depth, their motives, and the severity of the situation better than any big action sequence could. Unfortunately the bar scene is one of few scenes that are actual complete scenes, with dialogue and everything.
Most of the film is bits of action cut together in flashy fashion. It was clear the filmmakers got scared of the lack of success of Batman v Superman and started cutting and re-shooting, turning this film is something completely different from what it should have been. Character depth and story got lost to make way for pretty action and forced comic relief.
