Suicide Squad (2016)

Rating: 5/10 (16 December 2016)

With the Bluray of this film recently released, I decided to give the extended edition a rewatch. My initial thoughts about this film were not great as I thought a lot of the film was a mess. After rewatching the film again, my opinion of the film has not changed all that much. Be warned that this film will have potential spoilers and you should not read on if you don't want parts of the film spoiled.
I wouldn't say I'm a huge comic book fan but I do prefer DC to Marvel. I'm mostly a Wonder Woman fan but I want to see Batman films done right as well. While I wasn't a giant detractor of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the film could certainly have been better. I hold out hope that the Justice League film and Wonder Woman film can lift the DC Universe because Suicide Squad sure as hell did not.
The first problem I had with the film was the exposition of the squad's back story. Exposition is okay in doses and if its done correctly. This film has an awkward set up of it at a restaurant. The editing throughout the film is frenetic and erratic but its at its worst during the back stories. Also the character exposition is uneven. Deadshot and Harley Quinn get the most time. Its understandable because they are the main faces of the squad but its hard to really know the motivations or anything about the other characters when they have virtually no backstory or interesting element. Why did Captain Boomerang carry a pink unicorn around? Characters like Katana and Killer Croc are barely developed at all. Killer Croc seemed like a walking stereotype with bad lines. Characters are just thrown into this film, Slipknot was so useless and ultimately pointless. A lot of things felt pointless.
Initially I thought Will Smith would Will Smith the hell out of this film but he did alright. I am not a fan of Margot Robbie at all but apparently she played a Harley Quinn that was faithful to the comics. Fair enough. I cringed at many 9nearly all) of her lines but maybe that was more a character thing more than a script issue. There is plenty of bad dialogue going around in the film. A lot of it is awkward. Viola Davis is a great Amanda Waller; she always performs well. I am not that big on Jai Courtney in other films but honestly he was alright in this and had a few good moments. I didn't have a problem with Jared Leto's Joker as many others did but I think their criticisms are valid. Heath Ledger's Joker was phenomenal and will never be duplicated, so I applaud Leto for putting a different spin on the role and trying to make it work.
Plot progression is uneventful (for lack of a better word). The squad get assembled literally walk a few streets in the night and then they are at the villains location. Its like nothing happened except flashbacks and bits of action here and there. The middle section suffers from a few boring stretches. The villain(s) are not memorable and look too CG'ed. The flashbacks in real time during the boss battle was annoying too. I'm surprised at how bad this is because David Ayer is better than this. Fury and End of Watch were great and gritty war dramas and cop dramas respectively. He's also a good writer so I don't know what went wrong here. Was it the studio involvement that caused this film to be such a mess? This was such a disappointment for DC. The extended scenes don't add enough to make the film a little better. The Diablo reveal bothered me. He burns down the house with his family in it and then in the final battle we see him morph into a fire demon or something. So random and convenient. I would have shown him morph into the demon back in the house when he burned it down, like show a shadow on the wall of it happened just to foreshadow the real monster within him. Did I talk about the soundtrack yet? Yes its a collection of great songs but they are so randomly placed in the film and do not fit the tone of the film at all. The film struggles to really find a tone anyways.
I still think this film is a mess and kind of regret buying the Bluray. I may end up selling it because I really don't think it was worth the money or the rewatch. DC better get their act together and deliver on Wonder Woman, that film NEEDS to be good.
5/10