Just...not good

Rating: 4/10 (17 October 2016)

'Suicide Squad' is, it has to be said, a bit of a mess.
Not the out-and-out car-crash many reviewers claim, to be fair, but a prime example of a film made by committee. 'Hey, guys', you can imagine some Exec ejaculating with cynical glee 'Smart-arse, mis-matched teams with lots of comic one liners and post-modern comic- culture references work for Marvel Studios...let's try THAT!"
Enter Will Smith playing...um...Will Smith. Hello, CGI Croc - revelling in his grotesquery. Hey, putting Scarlett Johansson in a leather cat-suit worked...so put Margot Robbie in a ripped t- shirt...no, even better, a ripped WET t-shirt...will be EVEN BETTER! And the '70s soundtrack thing from 'Guardians of the Galaxy'...yeah, we'll do THAT, too.
This is, essentially, David Ayer trying to make a DC movie in a Marvel style...without really understanding why those films work.
All down to character, Davey. 'Suicide Squad' tries to do too much all at once. Katana, Croc, Boomerang and Enchantress are pretty much undeveloped one-note characters who exist only to make overlong CGI fight sequences just a little bit longer. Viola James' turn as Amanda Waller is nicely nasty, but unlikeable – which is, admittedly, kind of the point of her character, but it makes it difficult for viewers to see her rescue as A Good Thing.
What the POINT of Enchantress and her 'machine' was remains a mystery, possibly because Cara Delevigne's performance is so oddly out of step with everything else in the plot. Jay Hernandez tries hard to be the moral centre of the story, but all his effort is wasted: he's essentially ONLY there to give the CGI guys something else to do to pad-out a weak plot. Smith is good, but under-used. A solo outing for his character might be a better option.
The big surprise, for me, is Jared Leto. His wild-card Joker is interesting enough – including elements of Ledger and Hamill, but sufficiently divergent from both to remain original, and to be genuinely unpredictable. No obvious chemistry with Robbie, but a character which could – and most likely WILL – be effectively developed in Affleck's forthcoming Batman film.