Tonedeaf, joyless and above all boring

Rating: 2/10 (31 August 2016)

Suicide Squad had some genuinely brilliant trailers and looked like it was gonna be the first movie in the DCEU that actually knew what exactly it wanted to be. I was absolutely convinced that this movie was going to make me sigh in relief that there might actually be hope for DC's new movie universe. Instead it was by far the worst movie in said universe thus far.
The thing is while Batman V Superman was a mess and made absolutely no sense it at least had a few big wow moments. Suicide Squad doesn't even have that to offer it's just a monotonous bore from start to finish. The first third is pretty much nothing except for a huge exposition dump. Rather than naturally learning who each character in this team is throughout the course of the movie, David Ayer thought it was a brilliant idea to waterboard the audience with forced flashbacks that strive not only to give us the facts about them but also try to get us emotionally attached to them. I can't believe Ayer is so stupid that he doesn't know you can't expect an audience to care about a bunch of characters just because we are told to. It's literally like: "OK, Deadshot has a daughter who he loves, Harley Quinn was very tragically twisted and tortured by the Joker and Rick Flag fell in love with this scientist lady but she is possessed now. OK attachment out of the way let's get started!" Not to mention it's just boring watching 5 elongated flashback sequences back-to-back.
The worst character out of the bunch though is the villain. This one actually manages to make even the worst of the Marvel villains look like Heath Ledger's Joker. Not a word that comes out of her mouth is interesting and her evil plan is as clichéd and tiresome as evil plans get. Oh and if you were planning on seeing this because of the Joker, don't hold your breath. Leto's baffling performance is original and new in all the wrong ways. He strays so far he loses any semblance of actually playing the Joker and instead feels like some drugged up, gang lord pimp who is neither scary nor entertaining.
However the worst thing of all is that you just can't have fun with this movie. There's a clear attempt to ape Guardians of the Galaxy's success with similar soundtrack choices as well as frequent jokes and bombastic action sequences. This attempt falls flat on it's face though seeing as the music is awkward and out of place, the action scenes are repetitive and unimaginative and the funniest jokes in the movie barely even manage a chuckle. I will give credit to some of the actors though, in particular I think Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller are ideal choices. And every now and again this movie does manage to do something entertaining which is why I am bumping the score up a bit but overall those moments are so rare it doesn't matter in the long run.
A bad movie which I couldn't have seen coming in a million years. Lots of potential for solid and fun entertainment wasted.