Can't Exceed the Ranks of Hopelessly Average

Rating: 2/10 (8 December 2016)

Suicide Squad follows a group of villains who are recruited to stop a threat in their city.
The idea itself was done reasonably well, despite how dumb it actually is. It does a decent job explaining it and making it work, more or less.
The soundtrack is, of course, pretty decent. It's probably the best part of the movie. The music fits the movie reasonably well too, despite the fact that it could have gotten away with using pretty much any kind of music anyway.
Despite the minor goods, this movie is bad. The acting is terrible. Will Smith does a great job playing Will Smith, as per usual. He's not a character anymore, he's himself and he's really nothing special. Jay Hernandez was cringe- inducing to watch. He tried to pull off this weird black gangster performance that already doesn't work when a black man plays it. It doesn't work with a white guy, not to be racist. Jai Courtney is fine, but that's it. He pulls off an average performance, which in comparison to everyone else is pretty outstanding. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was generic as Killer Croc, he acts exactly how you'd expect: exaggeratedly. Cara Delevingne is awful as The Enchantress. As June Moone she's fine, but the second she goes all magical she's awful. Her mouth doesn't even sink up to her voice, and she gets all fidgety and it just doesn't work. She's trying to be creepy but she looks more like a parody magician. The two actors who stood out the most, however, were Jared Leto and Margot Robbie. Leto is, for his 12 minutes of screen-time, is tolerable for about half that time, after which he becomes so unbelievably annoying. If he's intolerable for 5 minutes, he's not going to make it in the Batman reboot. And Margot Robbie was so bad in this movie. She wasn't as annoying as Leto, but she still proved to be a nuisance. Her lines are performed with so much exaggeration, and her constant mood swings combined with the overall feel of the movie she just ends up being completely out of place.
Maybe it wasn't entirely the actor's faults, considering they were dealing with this script. The jokes and one-liners are horribly written, many of which are performed by Margot Robbie. There's just no way to deliver these lines in a natural way. Not only is the dialogue horribly written, but the story manages to be just the same. It's so messy and incohesive, nothing flows properly. It'll show one scene, then pretend it doesn't exist. How does that work? I haven't the slightest idea. Everything is just thrown together, making the movie a massive, weird, LSD trip of a movie where nothing flows into an understandable, or even remotely interesting, story.
But with all the pretty colors, it must be pretty to look at, right? Right? Wrong. The special effects are pretty terrible. It all looks incredibly fake, and when the movie tries to make some kind of distinct style with the effects and colors it just comes off cartoon-ish and fake. The main antagonists both look awful. One of them looks like some actor's face was copy-pasted onto this poorly CGI-ed magical body. As for the other, she's just a giant CGI mess. Special effects are constantly expelling from her body, and her whole body just looks fake, despite being a human and possibly an actual actor amidst all the falsehood.
There were a handful of scenes that appeared to exist more for the sake of the trailer than the actual movie. The scene where the Joker is lying on the floor surrounded by knives and laughing maniacally was so forced. It just kind of happened. No explanation. Nothing. He talked to someone about something unrelated for a bit acted completely calm about it, then leaned back and laughed for 2 seconds. Where did that come from? In this same scene the word 'HA!' is written all over the walls, which is probably supposed to make him look insane. But really it just doesn't make any sense. You wonder under what circumstances would he stand by the walls and spray paint the same 2-letter word onto the wall multiple times. I find it hard to believe he'd write it in a fit of passion, considering how simple and meaningless the word is. It's just there in the hopes that the audience won't read into it and take it as further proof that the Joker is insane. But you'd have to be trying to make yourself look insane to actually take the time to write that.
One of my biggest questions is what the point of a suicide squad even is. To my knowledge the movie takes place in Gotham, and both Batman and The Flash make appearances, and Superman gets mentioned, yet none of these guys are even considered for help. The characters never talk about how they could just use superheroes. Apparently using villains is the better option. And even without the authorities organizing anything, where the heck was Batman when the world was ending? Taking a nap? What about The Flash? Or Superman? Or literally any other superhero? Did they not see the violent beam of light in the sky, or the magic monsters? Just because the movie acknowledges their existence, doesn't mean they no longer have to show up in the movie.
Overall Suicide Squad is absolute trash. There's so much wrong with it, much more than I've talked about because I pushed so much of it out of my mind in the hopes of forgetting it. At it's very best, this movie is hopelessly average. At worst, well, let's not talk anymore about that. In the end I would never recommend this movie.