A satisfying popcorn film with several strong performances

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2016)

Suicide Squad is campy and fun, with a surprising amount of heart. 8/10 for general audiences, 9/10 for fans.
Praise:

We already knew that the film would be visually appealing. What I didn't expect was that David Ayer would be able to take nine new characters with decades of history and successfully make us care about them. Their disparate motivations make the conflict between characters genuine,and not the standard "two superheroes meet and must automatically fight," so when they do come together as a team it feels earned.

-The action scenes against the Lovecraftian hordes of corrupted citizens are brutal, high-energy, and satisfying spectacles in which every team member shines.
-The Boomerang/ Slipknot scene is lifted straight from the classic comics, with one sick twist
-Viola Davis plays Amanda Waller with perfect gravitas.

Margot Robbie's version of Harley Quinn is a near-perfect portrayal of a performance artist drawing attention to cover her pain. Not all her jokes land, but she's a worthy addition to the character's history.

-Will Smith's Deadshot is probably the most sympathetic version of the character to date. He takes a fairly clichéd backstory and makes us care.

We get to see Batman on the hunt in Gotham, and in his limited screen time Affleck proves once again that he's the most comic-accurate Batman to date.

Complaints:
-The pacing of the main story is a little weird. After a creepy and effective introduction, the villains of the piece camp out in the third act of a Ghostbusters movie and more or less wait for our heroes to catch up. The "big bad" isn't really the point of the film, but it would have been nice to give them more to do.
-For all the reports of Jared Leto's method acting, he fails to embody the Joker. He does not instill fear, nor perform with enough panache to make us cheer for him.
-Katana was amazing, and I would have loved to see more of her story. We don't really get to know her.