What Are We? Some Kinda [Working Movie Title] | Review - Suicide Squad

Warner Bros.

It's petty, I know. But nonetheless it's an instant mark down for a movie with me and it's quite indicative of the very problems I had with this one. But, as usual, I'm well ahead of myself. Firstly, we should introduce the SQUAD in question. As it did in the film, it will take no less than 30 minutes.

From left to right in the above banner:

The Enchantress (Cara Delevingne)
Ghostbusters villain and part-time evil Sky Witch. She inhabits the body of Dr. June Moone, an archaeologist and possibly Lara Croft in disguise.

El Diablo (Jay Hernandez)
Former LA gang banger and current Human Flamethrower. Has given up his fiery ways for a life of solitude and contemplation after torching his home and his young family. He is the moral center of this movie and is also the Desmond Miles of this movie.

Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney)
Typically The Flash's punching bag now the Squad's resident dirty Aussie. He loves beer, money and pretty pink horses.

Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje)
Scaly, green monster man who resides in the sewers of Gotham. Not to be confused with the one who breathes fire or the one who jumps high.

Deadshot (Will Smith)
The world's deadliest hitman. He can hit any target for the right price: will negotiate on site. Is trying to make a better life for his daughter but is captured before he can complete his Christmas shopping. If we could all be so fortunate.

Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman)
A special forces commander who has been assigned to watch over this group of villains. He is in a relationship with Dr. Moone that will in no way compromise the mission at hand. Clearly.

Slipknot (Adam Beach)
Native American tracker and expert wall climber who got invited just to have his head blown off. Inclusion!

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie)
Former Arkham Asylum psychologist and current right hand to The Clown Prince of Crime. Has an affinity for pistols, bubble gum and baseball bats. Would also like you to tell her she's pretty. Would also like you to tell her she's crazy.

Katana (Karen Fukuhara)
Colonel Flag's primary body guard. Not exactly a villain but still extremely skilled with a samurai sword. Her slain husband's soul is trapped in the sword but past that, we're not exactly sure what her motivations are for joining this aforementioned suicide mission. (Something of a regular thing for women in DC's movies. More on that a bit later.)

Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) *not pictured
The mastermind and director of Taskforce X. At no point does she give a decent, logical reason as to why these crazy asshats should be allowed to roam free and at no point do any of her colleagues offer any more than one rebuttal to this insane slo-mo heavy plan. It worked, sorta! So I guess it's cool!

Oh, and there's these guys, but, we don't care about them right now. *wink

A lot of feelings coming out of this one for me. A lot of it confusion. Not anger like after Dawn of Justice but a lot of wondering about choices made. For one, I had to remember why Will Smith was even in the movie and then I realized that I had made a mistake. You see, Deadshot is just one of many assassin roaming the DCEU. There is another marksman of similar wares known as Deathstroke aka Slade Wilson. Not to be confused, of course, with Wade Wilson.

"LOL Auto-correct can be so tricky sometimes!"

But no, Deadshot is his own character. A bit younger than Slade with much less blades. As it were, this movie might have been received better if it had been called The Deadshot Brigade. Starring Will Smith, playing Deadshot...playing Will Smith. A good performance. Surprisingly so. Not because he isn't good, but because of who he was playing. A killer with a heart of gold is a good archetype but not necessarily if they are being driven by pick-a-catch phrase dialogue. Given the odd tonal shifts throughout, his steadiness was welcome.

Mountaintop!

That's about as far as the steadiness goes, however, as he and Flag are really the only two members of the team that get any extended internal view by the audience. The only two besides Diablo, of course, who spends much of the movie in silence and the rest of it on fire. He's one of two here with any sort of moral compass which makes sense as he turned himself in and the others are mostly just bad guys. What doesn't make much sense is why he decided to help in the end. In one scene he is literally standing in a hail of bullets, frowning as he watches his "friends" fend for their lives. One pep talk from Deadshot and suddenly he's ready to go.

He's not nearly the only one. It tough to figure out why anyone does what they do. Sure, Rick wants to save the woman he loves from the Enchantress and Deadshot needs to save the world for his young daughter. What reason do the rest of these evil folks have to go to the center of the Trash Hurricane after the Colonel sets them free? Only one way to find out. And that's through the power of...

Nickelodeon

Zach Synder helped produce this. It is clear that this man loves dream sequences and anything resembling such. Sucker Punch, DoJ and now this are chock full. Acceptable momentarily because we finally get to see Jared Leto's interpretation of perhaps the greatest villain in modern fiction. There wasn't a big enough serving size to decide how good it was. It was interesting and different; both good things. He's less of a sociopath and more of a sleek drug dealer looking for his next score. In this story, that score is his girlfriend, Harley Quinn.

That's fine for a movie about The Joker. We'll be getting one soon enough with this good friend, Bruce. But what does Dr. Harleen Quinzel want? Sure, with 10 minutes left in the movie we find out what she wants but what does she want? As I noted earlier, similar to how Wonder Woman in DoJ was left to play "Hot Lady Staring at Dagger" before her big reveal, there's too much showing and not enough telling. There was plenty of time in this 2-hour epic to tell Harley's story. If only that time wasn't eaten up by cheeky camera angles.

Having had time to reflect on this - bad reviews, good reviews, all in between - I don't like The Enchantress. I don't like her inclusion in this story. Every scene with her and her war god brother are like stepping into a different movie. One much worse than The Deadshot Brigade. Everytime the audience finds themselves bonding more with the titular group of killers they are abruptly cut off to look at more spinning magic bullshit. Who are they? Where do they come from? When did they get here? We are never told! But at least we get Bullet Time!

Fox/Marvel

 I watched this movie with a non-comics reader. Someone who wasn't familiar with the characters or their stories. They had so many more questions than answers as the movie ended. Most of these questions could be deleted if they had chosen a different climax. I know it's a standby - certainly in these movies - but we've seen the Swirling Sky of Doom ending just a bit too much already.

This is not a great example, but you see my point.

What if they had been hired to take down another more powerful supervillain? (Clayface) What if they were tasked with saving Waller from a rogue, disgruntled metahuman? (Deathstroke) What if they had been forced to work with Batman? (To track down Harley's boyfriend: an operation she would clearly sabotage.) We will never know, because instead, they were hired to save Midway City from a giant purple and green tornado. Excitement!

The string of negative review that has ensued has spawned a troubling argument. A maddening one. "Why bother criticizing these comic movies so heavily? Why over-analyze it? We're not looking for high theater here!" I hear you folks. Now hear me.

Maybe these movies at their best will never win any sort of literary award. Maybe they will never be considered high art. But guess what is?

These stories matter. Sure, creative liberties can and must be taken. But that doesn't mean the quality has to suffer as well. You have with these stories a free pass to the gravy train of success. It shouldn't be this hard to get it right. And as fans, we can and should demand their best effort.

All of that being said...I liked this movie. More accurately: I liked parts of this movie.

Yes, it has problems. Glaring ones, in fact. DC and Warner Bros. continue their streak of odd, odd storytelling choices, including letting Zack Snyder tell those stories. Perhaps even the PG-13 rating held it back. But this movie had humor, which is something. It also had Batman, which is a big something. And it had three seconds of Joker, which is better than nothing.

It also had crazy mood swings, cheap deaths and even cheaper baddies. (The faceless smudge monsters work well for Samurai Jack. Not so much for your big budget action movie.) I can't blame anyone who doesn't like Suicide Squad. You could tell me everything that bothers you and I couldn't say you're wrong. I could only say it didn't bother me as much.

I just can't in good conscience give this movie the same rating I gave BvS. So take these 3 stars and don't call me until Diana is back on my screen.

3 Stars out of 5

Hey. Shout-outs to Amanda Waller for erasing the last 15 years of Batman's crime fighting career with this little stunt. Bruce is gonna need some help in his next movie. Maybe he should give this guy a call.

This one's for free Affleck.