Suicide Squad

SUICIDE SQUAD

Director : David Ayer
Year : 2016
Genre : Superhero
Rating : **1/2

If there was ever a movie that Warner Bros. and DC Studios needed to be good is was the greatly anticipated super-villain mash up 'Suicide Squad'. With both Zack Snyder's 'Batman v Superman : Dawn Of Justice' and the recent animated effort 'The Killing Joke', the audience and critical reception towards the ever-expanding DC Extended Universe (DCEU) could not be more divisive right now and while the franchise does have it's ardent fans, there are many, including myself, who see the DCEU as a poor competitor to Marvel's far more successful and infinitely more likable Cinematic Universe that has garnered both critical adoration and unanimously glittering audience responses. 

Maybe 'Suicide Squad' could be the film that could change the fortunes of DC and WB. With an star cast and the eye of a commercially successful director, 'Suicide Squad' sees some of DC's most beloved and iconic villains coming together on the big screen for the first time and while following on from the Stygian murkiness of 'Batman v Superman', the many trailers and posters promised a movie that would be in direct contrast to it.

Indeed with it's technicolor neon palette, diverse characterisations, a punky graffiti aesthetic and a soundtrack as eclectic as it's band of psychotic misfits, 'Suicide Squad' is a hell of a lot more fun to watch than both 'Batman v Superman' and 2013's miserable 'Man Of Steel'. The performances are for the most part pretty strong and frenetic direction by 'Fury's David Ayer perfectly reflects the craziness and spontaneity inherent in it's central characters. However, in it's attempts to rival Marvel Studios more lighthearted efforts, 'Suicide Squad' fatally copies ideas and themes from both 'Deadpool' and 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' without understanding why they worked so well in those instances. Throw in a downright terrible focal antagonist and you have a film that certainly has it's moments of anarchic entertainment but lacks both a story or a script worthy of it's wealth of it's unique and strange characters. 

Bought together to grudgingly save the world from a supernatural force, the titular squad of super-villains is a very mixed bag of personalities and performance quality. The most memorable of these by a substantial distance is Margot Robbie's scene-stealing Harley Quinn, the baseball bat toting troublemaker driven to insanity by Jared Leto's controversially tattooed Joker. She certainly has a lot of fun with her unhinged character and leaves much more of an impression than Leto's gangster Clown Prince who, despite what the trailers appear to claim, has an unexpectedly minor role in the proceedings. However, it doesn't take long for her sly humour and whiny Long Island accent to grate - not to mention the sickeningly sleazy way in which she is shot by Ayer most of the time. Will Smith's ace assassin Deadshot is also a fairly entertaining character, given most of the films one liners as well as the most relatable backstory of the entire group. 

However, the rest of the squad are forgettable or simply not well served. Jai Courtney's master thief Captain Boomerang is little more than a walking Aussie cliche machine, Jay Hernandez's flame-throwing El Diablo is a frankly dull character with little to no personality while Adewale Akinnuoye - Agbaje's cannibalistic Killer Croc struggles under the weight of prosthetics to convey any emotion whatsoever. As a team, the Suicide Squad have little in the way of comradeship or chemistry and while the disparate jukebox soundtrack which includes songs by Queen, Black Sabbath, Kanye West and Norman Greenbaum does it's best to keep the energy levels up, it becomes impossible to care about anything going on. Especially when it comes to the final act and the main villains.  

Portrayed by model Cara Delevingne, the witchy Enchantress and her metallic brother -a downright horrible CGI creation that looks like a reject from Alex Proyas' disaster 'Gods Of Egypt' - have little to no motive while their actual methodology lacks any logic whatsoever. Creating a lightning strewn vortex in the sky as well as an army of raspberry-faced monsters, 'Suicide Squad' quickly begins to resemble the hideous final act of Josh Trank's 'Fant4stic'. When you have a movie jam packed full of potantially interesting villains - especially the most iconic in DC history - why in the hell would you pick a character as bland and as unmemorable as Enchantress?

And therein lies the underlying problem with 'Suicide Squad'. What could have been a fun and tonally different entry in the ailing DCEU is yet another lackluster and and disheartening affair that certainly makes more of an effort to entertain it's audience than 'Batman v Superman' or 'Man Or Steel' but can't help but feel unbelievably redundant when compared to the other superhero movies it so unflinchingly rips off. A suitably disappointing finale to what has been a very disappointing Summer in the cinema.