"The Dirty Dozen" meets the DC Universe

Rating: 4/10 (27 January 2018)

I never really had any interest in watching this film when it was first released, but having been blow away by Margot Robbie's performance in "I, Tonya" I wanted to see another of her films and unfortunately chose this one. There's a lot of potential with a story that has the "worst of the worst" super villains being called upon for a chance at redemption by agreeing to go on a suicide mission to save earth. Think "The Dirty Dozen" meets the DC Universe. Written and directed by David Ayer, I'd have loved to seen a hard edged, dark "Training Day" version of a superhero film, but what we end up with instead is a lightweight PG-13 superhero underdog story. For a film that want's to be dark, this film features a pretty likable group of super villains. This film also reminded me how thin the DC Universe is with heroes and villains outside of the Batman and Superman. Okay, Deadshot and Harley Quinn are legit DC Universe figures, but when you have to include El Diablo and Captain Boomerang, you know there's not a rich pool of characters to pull from (for the record, I do own every issue of the 1989 run of El Diablo). There's also a very unpleasant overuse of CGI that had the effect of distancing me from the action on screen. Give me the stripped down street-level action of Netflix's "Daredevil" any day. On the plus side for the film, Robbie is good as Harley Quinn, but she's really the only standout of the squad (unless you count Viola Davis as their tough boss, who is equally good and probably scarier than any of the super villains). Another plus is an occasionally retro soundtrack that I'm pretty sure was influenced by the much better "Guardians of the Galaxy," although this film's soundtrack falters when it dips into bland contemporary hip hop. You also get fight scenes choreographed by Richard Norton (a regular nemesis of Jackie Chan in his action films of the 80s and 90s), but much of hand-to-hand fight sequences are muted by the bombastic CGI, which is the big problem with this film. Batman and Superman films are better suited to ridiculously large scale set pieces and generally bombastic action, whereas this film should have been more of a gritty, nasty, punch-you-in-the-gut type of action film that was along the lines of "Death Wish" with super powers. Overall, "Suicide Squad" isn't a terrible movie, but it's an absolute missed opportunity.