I come in peace, let me preface this review with that. I can't promise you my words won't get a bit ugly, but just think of me as that one relative in your family. You know the one I'm talking about, the one who always speaks the truth even when it's probably in his/her best interest to keep their mouth closed. I didn't hate Suicide Squad. Then again, I didn't like it much either. Allow me to explain.
Let's start with the good. Viola Davis playing the role of Amanda Waller? Absolutely phenomenal. By the end of the movie, you will definitely feel some kind of way about her and those feelings probably won't be positive. She makes you hate her. You think there's a screw loose until you realize there's actually an entire wheel missing. She is the one that puts the team together, but if I was making my own team, she would easily be my star player. There's such a cold demeanor about her that spreads from her eyes to her voice, a demeanor that screams, "You cross me and it'll be the last mistake you ever make." As I said, phenomenal.
The action sequences weren't half-bad in certain spots although a bit more disjointed than the scenes you might see in an Avengers movie. I especially loved the scenes that utilized Katana (Karen Fukuhara), a sword-wielding bad-ass whose weapon captures the soul of each person she kills. Watching her cut through enemies in slow motion was pretty fun and definitely put a smile on my face a couple of times. The cool thing about facing off against a swarm of enemies with only a sword or your hands as a weapon (as opposed to a bunch of guns) is it makes the odds seem more insurmountable and, therefore, leaves an even greater impression when you come out of the battle unscathed.
DC fanboys, did I take you high enough? Good, because this rollercoaster is about to plummet straight down. Hold on to your armbars.
The plot: Waller is recruiting a group of the worst of the worst supervillains to take on some kind of threat. Either I wasn't paying attention or we never actually find out what the original threat was as it quickly changes into something apparently way more sinister. I'm definitely willing to admit that I might have missed something as the story happens way too fast for my taste. Ever seen an episode of "Gilmore Girls"? If you haven't, maybe you've heard jokes about how the dialogue between the characters is extremely speedy and incoherent at times. That's the best way I can describe the storyline of Suicide Squad. Everything seems rushed to the point that it becomes a jumbled, hot mess. Even as a popcorn movie, you gotta give me something to go on so that I'm not sitting there scratching my head wondering why this story even needed to happen in the first place.
The character development is like looking at a bar graph in a stocks presentation. Will Smith's Deadshot would be your stock of the day as they clearly spent the highest amount of payroll in landing him. The amount of screentime he's given makes it quite obvious. There weren't enough lines in the world to make me care about his character, though, who I valued about as much as I did Captain Boomerang, the low stock in the bunch.
It's frustrating because that's Movie Creation 101: If you don't care to develop the characters then we, as the audience, won't care about the characters. If we don't care about the characters then we sure as crap don't care whether or not they succeed. And wasn't that the goal of the entire movie? To show us that, even though these characters are the worst of the worst, they're people we can stand behind and root for? Mission failed big time.
I could say more. I could talk about Killer Croc's awful dialect or the corny dialogue in general. Instead I'll wrap it up with this: It appears that DC is trying so hard to catch up to Marvel that they're not taking the time to establish their own world properly. So far they are 1-3, Man of Steel being the only quality movie in the bunch. They're not out of chances yet, but one more flop might bring them to the point of no return.
Suicide Squad is nowhere near as bad as Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. However, that's like saying Hilary's not as bad as Trump. They both suck. I'm rooting for you, DC, but I can't let you get away with putting out a blah product. Do better. I give Suicide Squad a 66.
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