A missed opportunity but still entertaining...

Rating: 7/10 (6 August 2016)

'Sometimes I could just kill myself' said Jack Nicholson's Joker in 1989 before putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger, frightening the bejeezers out of Kim Basinger. We've come a long way in 27 DC years, because now we have a whole team of nutjobs all willing to put their necks on the line in Suicide Squad (2016; 123 mins). Kinda willing, anyway, if willing means doing what Viola Davis' Amanda Waller tells you because you have a Snake Plissken-style head exploder inserted into your neck. Thus coerced, and commanded by goodie Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), baddies Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Capt. Boomerang (really?) (Jai Courtnay) and a host of others form the squad and set out todo stuff. Warner Bros/DC really needed a pick me up after the critically- mauled Batman vs Superman earlier in the year. That film has gone on to make $870 million and change worldwide, but there is an extended universe to consider and fan faith can only take a series so far at the box- office. Have they got one? Well, kinda. It's a film that starts very strongly. For a good half hour there is heaps of fun, actual fun, to be had as the squad are introduced, quirky stats and titles coming up alongside them as they are fought and caught by certain familiar vigilantes. It could have been annoying but it works and it promises much. It felt like I wanted to learn more about this world and I was enjoying being in it. The cast, too, works for the most part. It is inevitable that some members will be squeezed in order to make room for the big guns, and an opportunity for some real inter-team sniping is largely missed, but everybody gets a scene or a bit of a scene, and Robbie and Smith are very watchable, the former pretty much stealing the show as expected. Director David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury), a pretty sombre character himself, doesn't sell all of their moments as seductively as he should but neither does he drop too many clangers. The only two that come up short are Kinnaman, a man who must have a terrific agent because he is quite simply boringly awful in everything ever, and Jared Leto. The latter's Joker will be a matter of personal taste. He does a decent job selling nuts and his goons are great but I'm not his biggest fan at the best of times and, having loved Heath Ledger's incarnation, this was not the best of times. So the team is mostly decent and a good tone is set—one that is consistent with the darker DC world and at the same time brighter; the film's look is pretty good, so we're all set andthen someone lost focus. Just as with BvS, coherence is this film's biggest problem. There is a WTF? moment to challenge Batman's crappy dream sequence about half way through, and suddenly we are in a story that just doesn't work well enough. It still feels enjoyable because of all the personalities and the fighting and whatnot, but it's all over the place, and the central plot ends up feeling and looking like something from 80s flick Masters of the Universe. Not a comparison anyone at WB would want drawn, I'm sure. There is an inherent schism in the DC world due to the vast power variance across its chief heroes and there is some of that here. Marvel had the same problem with The Avengers but it was overcome with ease by concentrating on the inter-team dynamic. With villains this should have been easier and there are flashes of the same but not enough to stifle creeping realisations that some of the characters, in fact most of the characters, are actually a bit pointless and ill-fitting for the story they went with, some elements of which appear lazily written (there are some shenanigans with a bomb that are just lame). But hey, you know, overall I liked it. A super-powered Dirty Dozen is a great concept and there is a lot to like in it, it's just a shame it goes wonking its way into la-la land rather than doing something more interesting with a good set of characters.