Movie Review: Suicide Squad

Joke’s on us: Suicide Squad is clumsy, ill-conceived and only ever accidentally good. There are no survivors.

A fleet of appealing, interesting actors (and Jared Leto) set out to make a DC movie work. Talk about a kamikaze mission.

David Ayer’s Suicide Squad had been promised to us as the saviour of DC Entertainment, which has struggled to revive its iconic comic figures ever since Christopher Nolan wrapped up his Batman trilogy.

With Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice already earning ire for being sullen and flat, it had been hoped that Suicide Squad, in which the villains get to play heroes, could inject some colour, comedy and devious charm into the snowballing franchise, ahead of 2017’s Justice League.

But nope. The buyer’s remorse sets in almost immediately, with the first handful of hastily-assembled sequences setting the tone of spasmodic clunkiness for the rest of the feature. It can’t even figure out the right place to put the opening title. No, it’s not while Viola Davis walks into a restaurant.

The first act is the most ungainly, with Davis’ morally murky government agent Amanda Waller pitching to colleagues her proposed ‘Task Force X’, which will utilise incarcerated meta-humans for missions too dangerous – and potentially too doomed – for the normies.

One by one, we see the backstories for Deadshot (Will Smith), a hitman who just wants his kid back; Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the brain-fried bae of Jared Leto’s Joker; Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), the ancient witch residing in the body of archaeologist June Moone; El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a gangbanger who can harness fire; Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who is pretty much what it says on the can; and Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), who’s Australian.

Don’t expect some kind of Ocean’s Eleven recruitment montage; that would be too smooth for Suicide Squad, which would much rather stitch together origin vignettes and then dump the characters on Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), their team-leader – and doting BF of June Moone. Before we know it, they embark on their first – and only – mission. Later, El Diablo looks upon this motley crew and calls them his family. By this point, they have spent maybe three hours together.

There’s gotta be a better way to tell this story. Instead, Suicide Squad sputters and groans before sprinting to its lacklustre conclusion, all with the comic timing of a death rattle. Characters established early on as being significant (like Ike Barinholtz’s despicable prison guard) disappear without explanation, while bonus squad members emerge as afterthoughts midway through proceedings.

A shame, because Ayer has emerged as a talented writer-director in recent years, especially equipped to deal with cinematic teams. (I guess if I was forced to pick my favourite David Ayer movie about a Suicide Squad, I’d go with Fury.) I’m inclined to think Suicide Squad’s messiness is more the result of editing suite tinkering than Ayer’s scripting, though that doesn’t excuse its other sins.

For instance, there’s an uncomfortable strain of recurring violence against women throughout. Almost every gent here has either killed/ tried to kill their partner, hit a woman or instructed someone else to do so. Even Ben Affleck’s Batman (who rocks up for a hot second) plugs Harley Quinn in the face. Some of these dudes aren’t even meant to be baddies. This all combines into a gross collage and there’s not enough thoughtfulness under the surface to suggest a potent parable about domestic violence, as Harley Quinn and Joker’s complicated relationship usually is.

Robbie, as was to be expected, is a highlight as the unhinged, still-human Harley Quinn, though her counterpart, Jared Leto, is just bad teeth and worse instincts. His cartoonish turn is for naught, making him the first big screen Joker to fail at stealing their own movie. Hell, he can’t even steal the movie out from under Jai Courtney (who is an unexpected delight). It’s almost as if the perpetual harassment of your workmates is not enough to build a performance around.

Even as a sociopathic sniper, Will Smith can’t shed his boilerplate heroism, which ends up being the picture’s saving grace. (If Suicide Squad was really a black comedy, you would welcome its nihilism. It ain’t, so we don’t.) However, it’s Davis who leaves the lasting impression, as the one anti-hero truly untroubled by her violent, questionable actions, all in pursuit of a greater good. She also gets the best lines. Okay, best line (about putting our leads in a hole “and throwing away the hole”).

Candied, suitably gaudy set design and the inherent allure of its cast cannot save Suicide Squad, which falters in many ways (structurally, ethically, entertainingly) yet above all fails to pull off the basic requirement of any team-up flick: Contain actual relationships.

The members of Suicide Squad seem to exist in isolation from one another, occasional platitudes about "family" aside. Unfortunately, the film is not isolated enough from the rest of DC’s celluloid problems.

2.5/5

In cinemas August 4. Rated M for fantasy themes, violence and coarse language.