Suicide Squad
(David Ayer)
One of the best edited trailers of the year is also one of the worst edited films of the year. Suicide Squad is a mess. I didn't want to believe what the critics were saying, I wanted this film to be good. I'm sorry fans, but the critics were right with this one.
After Superman has opened our eyes to a world with superheros and meta-humans, Amanda Waller decides to put together a task force full of 'bad people'. Should anything go wrong, they have will have complete deniability. This squad consists of some colourful characters and when one of their own goes rogue, they need to put their differences aside to save the world.
As I sat in the theatre, laughing at unintentionally funny parts, rolling my eyes at things that were ridiculous and genuinely being upset at how poorly this film was thrown together, I couldn't help but wonder what this film originally looked liked. After the tepid reaction to BvS, the studio scrambled to make this film a bit lighter in tone, the result is a horrible mess of a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. Flashback sequences haphazardly thrown in, character backstories dropped, cheesy jokes added, there are so many areas of this film that are out of sync that it hurts. Blatant continuity issues too just further cements the fact that this film was cut, re-cut, cut again and then reassembled from scratch.
The squad has Will Smith as Deadshot. A role I originally was cautious about, but he is one of the best aspects of this film. Along with Margot Robbie as Harley-Quinn, these two are standouts. That's the obvious part, even to a fault. The film dedicates so much time to these two that the rest of the squad is left behind. El Diablo has one of the more interesting backstories, but we only get a mere glimpse at it. He later has a line about the squad being his "new" family...what? He's known these people for less than 24 hours. None of the actions of these people ring true towards the climax, it's a joke.
Katana and Captain Boomerang are severely underused. Killer Croc becomes a stereotype, Rick Flagg has a forced relationship with another character to try and jam in some sort of emotional response, but it comes up short. Who's left on the squad? Oh yeah, Slipknot, the random guy only added to prove the bomb devices are real. Give the guy some backstory, he just randomly shows up. It's awkward.
A fun as it was to have Harley-Quinn in the film, she does not belong in the Squad with people who have fire like powers, or are have crocodile. She's crazy and has a bat, that's it. That's just a nitpick from me. Finally we have Leto's Joker. A lot must have been left on the cutting room floor for him. The man should have been the villain of the piece, it would have been more grounded. Instead we get some supernatural powered villain. It doesn't gel with the film. It gives more nameless henchmen for them to kill, but zero stakes.
Suicide Squad is a miss. Maybe a more comprehensive edit exists for DVD, maybe I'll give that a look, but damn is this a miss for me.
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