Better than I expected, but far from what it might have been

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2017)

Maybe it was the vicious reviews that led me to over compensate and be somewhat pleasantly surprised by this. Of course, I'm not the core audience, being well into middle age and not generally a fan of the comic book movie universe. That once very entertaining world now feels played out and repetitive to me, no matter how high tech the special effects.
But I did love Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy- largely for hijacking and making fun of the formulas. And that's probably why I liked (not loved) Suicide Squad. While not as successful at biting the hand that bore it as those other two comic films that refused to play by the rules, it still has fun with darkness and light and all our preconceptions about heroes and villains.
Indeed, it could have been flat out terrific, but two substantive problems held it back. First, the core plot is as silly, illogical and uninspiring as any in the weakest of the genre. Just because the film is more about the characters than the story doesn't mean there's couldn't have been something a little more imaginative to hang the tale on.
And, perhaps even more damningly, for a film that purports to be a sort of 'Dirty Dozen' of the comic book world, its villains turned anti-heroes are nowhere near 'anti' enough. They're all entertaining lightweights in the moral division. If they've done bad things you can be sure it was always for good reasons and/or they feel really bad about it. Instead of forcing us into the juicy, morally messy joy of forcing us relate to some really bad 'heroes', these are more misunderstood victims with superpowers then Walter Whites who happen to also be able to make things fly or explode. And that's too bad, because with more bite, edge and embrace of punky anarchy this could have been that rare popcorn movie is truly subversive, instead one that mildly, if sometimes entertainingly, play acts at it.