A Talented Cast Trapped in a Rushed, Crowded Mess

Rating: 5/10 (5 August 2016)

Suicide Squad, the next entry in the ever bleak DC Cinematic Universe, is here and frankly I was disappointed. The hype for this film was big and expectations may have been admittedly very high, but this film fails on a level deeper than just a bad movie where a good movie was expected. Suicide Squad features a great cast, but falls flat in terms of story, and rushes through its already thin story. What's so sad is that the formula for a really good movie was there and the filmmakers ignored it completely.
With a film that has so many talented stars in it, and Jai Courtney, it's not surprising that the expectations were very high for the film. Will Smith is not immune to bad decisions when it comes to his films, but he's pretty good at rising above them and making films better all on his own. Jared Leto is pretty great in this film, he'll undoubtedly be judged by comparisons to other Joker performances, but just on his own merit he was great. The entire cast did a good job, Smith, Leto, Viola Davis, and Margot Robbie were all excellent in their performances, but they were failed by a poorly crafted film.
The biggest problem is the fact that the screenwriter and director seemed to not be on the same page, when it came to what this film was about, or more precisely who this film is about. To me, it's about Rick Flag and the Enchantress. However, clearly somebody in the process missed that and felt that every character needed an appropriate amount of backstory, which they don't. The result of this confusion is two cardinal sins, the first is that the audience is given a lot of needless scenes of backstory that we don't need that waters down the story. The second and far more egregious is that the better story was very clearly sitting within this watered down, and crowded mess that we ended up with.
Without spoilers this film rushes through introducing all of it's characters and giving backstory, for almost every one of them. Frankly there are more subtle and effective ways to show us something than 5 minute flashbacks for every character. Above that we can't care about the characters, besides Amanda Waller who you will grow to hate because Viola Davis gave an amazing performance, which really hurts the film because they were on to something. The painful thing is that if the filmmakers had looked at what they had, they may have noticed that certain alternative plot points would have been far more emotionally impactful, and they just missed them.
It's easy to see how some will enjoy this film, it's not boring, or unenjoyable. This film just suffers from the same problem that Batman v. Superman did, the better film rests within the mess we were given. In the end Suicide Squad is rushed, crowded, features a weak villain, and feels like a poor man's Guardians of the Galaxy. That being said kids may enjoy this film and comic book die hards like will too, simply for the spectacle.