Great cast, terrible plot, mediocre action scenes and shoddy humor

Rating: 2/10 (4 August 2016)

I just got back from the movie and have a few feelings about it. It started out solid enough, we get to know the characters/motivations/weaknesses. Yes it was hurried but necessary and stylish.
Then things drastically started to go downhill. DC's answer to Samuel Jackson is the stony faced Amanda Waller. She decides she needs to get these people together in case of another meta-human attack and by doing so she instigates the attack itself.
So now we are faced with the big bad enchantress who we know nothing about and really aren't that committed to as a movie baddie. But that's OK... the bad guys aren't that important if our protagonists have good charisma with each other on screen. Here was my biggest issue. They just don't.
The enemy ends up being a barrage of blackberry-headed minions and it begins to feel like an annoying video game. Step into a room, kill all bad guys, move on to the next room and repeat. To add insult to injury Rick Flagg even gets dragged away twice and has to be rescued like those ridiculous 'keep them alive' missions in video games. The action feels more suited to a war movie than to a comic book movie (perhaps the directors past is showing here)
I wanted to like this movie, I wanted to like the characters but there were points where the dialogue was just so bad. TWICE, characters randomly hit on Katana to which she does not respond. It's not funny. TWICE everyone ends up ogling Harley Quinn. The attempts at humor in the movie were weak at best. Killer Croc utters so many pointless one liner's that are neither funny nor useful. It just didn't work.
You want humor? When the characters are being shown their wildest dreams, give us a ridiculous seen with Boomerang. Give us some funny scenes with Diablo and stop saying 'esse' at him.
I loved the romance with Joker and Harley.. give us more of that, don't squeeze the joker into a bunch of different personas.
The bar scene was lovely, you felt the characters come close to something like a bond. Don't give us that at the end... give us that at the start of the movie, make us actually feel like these people mesh together well. They call themselves a family at the end but they have done nothing to merit that.
Diablo had a cool scene at the end and Will Smith played an amazing Deadshot but I feel Rick Flag was just badly cast. I never really cared for the Rick and Deadshot scenes together on screen... It never felt like it really worked.
Overall, I'll still watch DC movies, but I do feel like they are missing something that the Marvel counterpart has got right. Maybe it's heart, maybe Marvel just have more practice but I hope DC can redeem themselves next year.