Jumbled mess from start to finish

Rating: 5/10 (20 August 2016)

Let me begin by saying I love DC Universe and despite its hate, I thoroughly enjoyed "Batman vs. Superman" and thought it was a pretty solid movie. I can't say the same for Suicide Squad. I was really looking forward to this movie but ultimately felt disappointed when I left the theater. This moving lacks in everything from acting, writing, storytelling, emotion, direction, editing, and even the sound mixing. Suicide Squad simply put is a jumbled mess, especially in the writing and editing department. Scenes are thrown together all over the place. There's no pacing and no proper "arc" to the story. We spend a significant portion of the movie introducing the characters but not enough time actually growing to like any of them. One of the things that really bothered me about the story line and pacing (related to editing as well) is that, there was no real motivation to initially form the Suicide Squad by Viola Davis's character Waller. She just happened to put them together, then immediately following there was a big, terrorist attack by the evil enchantress and her brother. She just then happens to have the Suicide Squad available. Wouldn't have it made more sense for the terrorist attack by the enchantress to motivate wanting to use extremist "bad guys" to fight her and not just conveniently have them? This is but one of many poor areas in both writing and editing of the film where things didn't make sense.
Another thing that didn't make sense was Joker's involvement in the story. His character ultimately felt completely pointless to the storyline of this film. I almost feel as if they just threw him into this movie to make people want to see it because it would have the "Joker" attached. I firmly believe the writing, story, and editing would have fit better if they weren't trying to give us some silly and pointless side-plots with the Joker. This movie also spends too much time back-tracking on past events about how the characters go to where they are instead of actually letting us learn who they are by dealing with their predicaments and situations in the movie. I have no real comments about Leto's Joker because his character was ultimately wasted and he never really had his proper place in the spotlight. Furthermore Suicide Squad is way too aggressive in throwing in classic-rock soundtrack anywhere where it seemed fit. I can't believe this is something I have to make a point about, but it's so bad that I have to. I don't mind a solid soundtrack to a film, but Suicide Squad thoroughly abused it. Instead of tastefully throwing in classic soundtrack from time-to-time in an effort to tell the story better, the movie just abuses it, throwing in classic soundtracks wherever it seemed fit. Furthermore, they often use the music in at wildly inappropriate times, and also blasts over dialog to the point where you couldn't hear what the characters were saying. How bad does a AAA-budget Hollywood film have to be to not even have a proper audio-mix? I ultimately felt like this movie was trying too hard to piggyback off of "Guardians of the Galaxy" with the success of their soundtrack instead of trying to be original about it.
If you've actually seen this movie, ask yourself the following question; who was the main character of the film? Was it Deadshot? Or Harley Quinn? Or the Mexican guy with fire, or the lizard man? Did you even remember the names of some of these characters if you aren't some die-hard comic book fan? And can you also properly describe some of the characters and why they're important? The point I am making here; the movie is easily forgettable. It failed to tell me a story or make me care about any of these characters. In fact, it made me not care about some of the characters so much, that I either forgot their names overnight or forgot they were even in the movie. Are those the qualities of a good quality, Hollywood film? Now the movie did try in some ways to do this. They gave some backstory to all the characters, especially the big-names like Deadshot played by Will Smith. Will Smith was fighting for his daughter, and wanted to prove he was more than a "piece of crap" serial killer. But other than his character, who did they make us care about?
Ultimately this movie is just a big mess. They tried to put too many characters in one film without us actually caring about any of them. This is easily a forgettable movie, which is a shame. It had a lot going for it. The action was solid, the costumes were solid, I liked most of the cast. But the story-line and character development were severely lacking. Follow by the the poor timeline of events followed by the mediocre editing makes this one film, I have to say you should pass on on this one. 5/10