Short on concept, rife with stereotypes, bad one-liners, re-shoots, we saw this coming.

Rating: 5/10 (30 January 2017)

If the daily set photos and re-shoots were not red alarms, the first fifteen minutes of Suicide Squad will quickly set them off. Suicide Squad is a mess.
The first act is very poorly edited. I chalk this up to lose foreshadowing for later on, and the director getting panned by WB to keep it PG-13. Rough jump shots occur to introduce characters that are somehow NOT introduced well, with the ensemble getting shafted to give Robbie and Smith the most screen time. The the initial premise is totally unbelievable; CIA operative trying to recruit the baddest of the bad to take down... Superman? Batman? JL? I'm not too sure, because Batman is part of the recruiting process in this. Predators has a more convincing plot than Suicide Squad. If the Suicide Squad is the "contingency plan" then why are they using Bats to get them and nixing their own agents? It's a huge WTF.
Second half, the bad guys start bonding, and we get the rebel with a heart of gold syndrome. Problem is not all of them are on-board. Only two of them are remotely likable because the others have been snubbed for screen time, and it's hard to convince us one minute that Harley Quinn gives a sh*t and the next she wants to run off with Mista Jaaay. This goes into the third act as well until the finale.
Third act has the least issues and I think this is what Ayer really had in mind; the villains cooperating to take on something bigger. Unfortunately, The Dragon in this movie, sucks. I won't spoil who it is, but come on. Screenwriters have got to start setting up villains properly over the course of multiple movies. One-shot-evil-just-because doesn't work. Not in Marvel, not in DC. If you disliked Whiplash in IM2, you won't be too keen on the real antagonist. (Also, why the weird dancing? If it's too recreate Santanico Pandemonium, try again.) I did kind of like Robbie in this, she's very attractive with her glasses on. But she was overall just annoying. And surprisingly, Hernandez and Jai Courtney for once are the most standout. The other (including Smith and Leto) are just bleh. Smith didn't play Deadshot. Smith played Will Smith. Killer Croc was a huge racial stereotype, Leto growled at people and acted like a weird drug lord (NOT an anarchist), and the other supporting cast were just not quite there. They actually decapitate a Native American guy (who can apparently climb anything) who's part of the Squad without introducing him! Move over NAACP, NCAI would like to talk with Warner.
Lastly, the one liners. The effing one-liners! Stahp. My only theory is they were trying to recreate the magic from The Dark Knight trilogy and wound up somewhere around Batman & Robin.
So yeah, not my CB movie of the year. Ayer has done better, and I suspect that WB (yet again) tied his hands. He has admitted that the character concept for Joker wasn't right. Hoping, but not holding my breathe for Affleck's Batman movie. But if MoS, BvS, and now SS are any indication, we may not be to far off from another re-re-reboot.