Suicide Squad

A DC victory

Suicide Squad follows a group of villains employed by the government to accomplish tasks that the heads of state would rather keep quiet. With the code name "Task Force X" we join Deadshot AKA Floyd Lawton, the hitman that never misses his mark; Harley Quinn AKA Harleen Quinzel, The Joker's number one girl; Enchantress, the centuries old witch with immense power; El Diablo, the pyrokinetic ex-gang memeber; Captain Boomerang, the Australian criminal who uses boomerangs as his weapon of choice, Killer Croc, the incredibly strong, mutated, crocodile-man; Rick Flag, the soldier in charge; and finally Katana, the assassin whose sword keeps the souls of whoever it slays. The team must rescue an important person in the middle of the world ending, while trying to make sure those in charge don't blow their heads off.

I really liked this movie. I didn't love it, it's not my favorite superhero movie (not even my favorite DC movie) but it was good. It has been a while since I've seen a DC movie and had so little to complain about. So let's get the complaints out of the way first. The pacing was a bit crazy. It went from being drawn out, to being rushed to get to the end, almost instantly. When the movie took it's time it shined a lot more than when it started trying to wrap everything up. In the beginning, the audience is introduced to the team individually, the team is recruited, the team is sent on a mission, and everything seems to be going well. All of a sudden when The Joker shows up for Harley Quinn and it goes off the rails. Next thing you know, we are finding out Rick Flag's true intentions, going into a bar and finding out about El Diablo, being lectured about values, fighting a big villain. It's so much crammed into such a small amount of time. Much like Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice this movie could have stood to have an extra 30 minutes attached to it. 

I have now seen the Suicide Squad brought to life four separate times (the episode "Task Force X" in Justice League: Unlimited, the "Suicide Squad" episode of Arrow, and the DC Animated Film Batman: Assault on Arkham) the thing the other incarnations all had in common was that the Suicide Squad was always put on missions where you never really saw them fighting anything huge. They are always trying to steal something/retrieve something and that works for them because they are "bad guys" so it plays to their strengths. That's the main place where this movie stumbles. The mission is for them to get a person out of a hot zone while crazy stuff is going down around them, and that is a great premise for a suicide squad movie. When you take away that premise and make them fight a big monster at the end we are left with just another run-of-the-mill superhero movie. The characters in this deserve more than that.

The place where this movie shined the most was in the performances given by the incredible actors. The person that always makes or breaks a good Suicide Squad is Deadshot. He is the person that will always be in the squad, and usually gives the squad a certain amount of heart. Will Smith played this character perfectly. Just the right amount of touching scenes with his daughter, and clever quips to make me believe he was really Deadshot. As good as Will Smith was he is almost completely out shined by Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. I never thought I would see Harley Quinn played so perfectly. Every "Mistah J," or "Puddin' " instantly brought me back to seeing that character on Batman: The Animated Series. The rest of the cast did very well with their roles as well, but not everything was perfect. I was not a huge fan of Jared Leto in The Joker role. I admit I had reservations about the way he looked before this movie came out, but I always said that his acting could probably save my perception of his look. He does do well in a lot of aspects; his laugh is great, his menacing stare is great, and I did feel generally uneased by him overall.... its just that stupid mouthpiece that really trashes his performance. Most of the time I was wishing for subtitles because I couldn't hear half of what he said. 

The directing in this was phenomenal. During El Diablo's arch you get to see some true struggle and it is shot in a great way that pulls you into that characters troubles. You can go from the bright neon of a car chase between the Joker and Batman, to a dirty sewer waiting for Killer Croc and feel completly at ease with the major changes in scenery. The job of the people involved in this is to make me lose myself in each transition, and they did that almost effortlessly each time. I'm a big fan of David Ayer From Fury, Training Day, and End of Watch, I could see a major difference in his style of "Comic Book movie" then someone like Zack Snyder's style. The only thing I wished for was more time with the characters as individuals and less time fighting the big bad guy at the finale.

In the end, this movie may not change your life, but it was extremely fun and it is the best thing DC has put out since The Dark Knight. It would be a disservice to this movie to not see it in theaters. It feels good to write reviews again after a long break, and thankfully I didn't have to see something awful as my introduction back into the writing game. 

Score: Decided to do away with the scoring system, never believed in assigning numbers to how I thought about a movie. Read the article to discover how I felt about the movie.