Almost like a 2-hour long music video collection.

Rating: 4/10 (6 August 2016)

I know nothing about Suicide Squad as a property, so I can only compare it to other movies in the genre and of course movies in general. Zero emotional investment beforehand can sometimes reward you.
"Suicide Squad" feels like a movie that could've been many things, but ended up being almost nothing. There are many glimpses of engaging and good ideas or moments, but they all seem to drown under meaningless noise, montages, flashbacks and a playlist consisting of some classic rock songs along with some more modern stuff.
I thought I would like the soundtrack and the score based on the trailers and some songs choices, but I ended up hating it. It's used in all the wrong ways and it took me out of the movie more than anything else. One song ends, another starts, and it's not organic or skillfully woven to the story. It feels like a cynical effort to be a part of some trend instead of serving any real creative purpose.
Tones can shift and that's alright, it keeps things interesting. But here, almost everything is forced. You can be in the middle of a scene, and out of the blue you get a cheap, emotionally manipulative tonal shift that breaks the focus. It doesn't feel natural. Every time this movie tries to make you care, it tries really hard. You can ever hear it: If it tries to make you sad, the music goes to ULTIMATE SAD. If it tries to make you excited over a boring action scene where faceless demon cronies get bullets and fists to their face, the music goes to ULTIMATE HEAVENLY BATTLE MUSIC. Absolute overkill. Sometimes the score doesn't even seem to know what the movie is showing. The composed score in itself would be alright, possibly even very good if used differently or in a whole other movie.
Technically, for a PG-13 action fantasy movie, "Suicide Squad" is decent. It's shot well enough, and it's fluid in its own way. It's mostly dark, shot at night or in dark locations, which is fitting but executed in an almost dull way. At some points the cinematography looks nice. Many stylized "cool shots" are there. Special effects are good at some parts, and the camera held its own in action scenes. Still, I felt nothing watching the action. It was competent and visually not horrible, but there was an emotional disconnect like in a music video; something technically good might be happening, but it feels vacuous and empty. It didn't have weight to it, no matter how many shots were fired. I liked watching the other stuff more.
It's hard to say anything about the writing. They had tons of material, some good ideas and a few interesting character moments but nothing connected into an exciting, tight story. A few times when there was a flashback, I wanted to see those stories instead of the one I got. It wasn't that hard to follow, but it was scattered. I failed to see the beating heart of the story. The villain didn't get me excited, and many lines were just "lines" instead of real dialogue.
It's hard to say anything about Ayer's directing either, because I don't know how much control he had over this movie. I'll give him this though: the movie was very fast-paced and economical in the way all of the information was dumped on the audience. It's bound to be that way with so many montages and snippets, but at least it didn't all fall apart. I can only imagine what the result would have been with little to no intervention from studio execs who just have to have their slimy hands all over these movies.
Margot Robbie and Will Smith are the leads. Will Smith is charismatic enough that he didn't even need to act, he was just casually throwing lines around, and that was enough. Robbie is the one who put up a performance, becoming Harley Quinn. She is just the right kind of mixture of sexy, cute, crazy, quirky, dangerous and vulnerable. She even sold me on one of those emotionally manipulative scenes, when everything around her didn't. She had plenty of horrible lines, but managed to rise over her material. Her outfit is the most colourful of the entire cast too, so naturally the camera loves her in a movie where everything is dark. Take Robbie out of the movie, and you got nothing. Kinnaman, Davis and Hernandez were decent, I guess. The "Killer Croc" made me cringe a couple of times. They wasted a really charismatic actor for that?
About performances, I didn't like Jared Leto's Joker. Almost every moment felt pretentious, forced and the wrong kind of insane. As if he was playing a drug addict doing crazy villain impressions. I like Jared Leto, but if this was his idea, then someone should have said something. I doubt Leto was in control though. I know that the Joker was supposed to be just a side character, and he was. Nevertheless, it felt like a poker game where they didn't have much of a hand, but they still wanted to overplay their hand each time he was on screen.
To summarize, "Suicide Squad" tried too hard. If it ever had a voice of its own, it was butchered by studio executives and a scattered structure. It felt like a collection of music videos. Not only because of its soundtrack, but also how the story was handled. You get glimpses of something, then it's over, and another tune begins. In the end, almost nothing stuck with me and I felt quite numb, bored and exhausted. That said, this can still work as a popcorn movie, especially if you care about this property and characters. It's technically sound, fast-paced, packing some good short moments and Margot Robbie is good in it. That much you'll get, but not anything beyond that.