Half-baked plot, two dimensional characters, and terrible dialogue

Rating: 6/10 (7 August 2016)

Mediocre at best, "Suicide Squad" is confirmation that DC is flailing in comparison to Marvel. Just like Batman v Superman, you are left feeling unsure of/unconvinced by the main characters' motivations, and equally unsure what the heck the writers were thinking when they concocted the plot line. A few observations in no particular order of importance.... 1) BAD dialogue. Just really, really terrible writing there...I don't think a single character said anything funny, interesting, clever, or surprising. Harley Quinn almost got there a few times, but her lines could have been SO much better! For example, WHY would she say "Are you the devil?" to Amanda Waller before they even meet? That's not funny and it doesn't even make any sense...it was clearly just the writers trying to show us that the Squad members have a kind of fear/reverence for Waller, but that had not been illustrated yet. It just sounded dumb. However, Margot Robbie delivered her poorly written lines well, and portrayed the character in other ways with her mannerisms, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. 2) Every scene where it was the audience's time to be blown away by the awesomeness of the Squad member's skills fell very short. For example, they couldn't think of a cooler way to show DeadShot is a great with a gun than using the same freaking cutout people targets that everyone practices with?! How about having him shoot the eye of a pigeon flying by or literally anything else?? Get creative! And then El Diablo's "wow" moment is lighting a portion of a building on fire? Any knucklehead with gasoline and a match can do the same thing. None of these moments were interesting to watch. 3) The film's antagonist should not have been supernatural because it didn't allow everyone to shine. We hardly got to see what Boomerang or Katana can do...they could have easily not been in the movie! Why wouldn't they go against the Joker? That would have made him more of a main character, it would have been interesting to see Harley struggle with her loyalty, and everyone could have had cooler action scenes fighting his minions. And didn't Jared Leto prepare super hard for this part? He was in maybe 3 scenes and none of them were memorable. 4) The sudden BFF-ness of the Squad that Diablo references in his "I'm not losing my second family" (gag) line, and Harley in her "you hurt my friends" line feels really inappropriate and strange...these are criminals who are supposed to be motivated by self-interest and they have known each other for a span of 8 hours. This is not that kind of movie. 5) The "modern gangster" theme of the movie really works, and I liked the costumes and appearances of all the characters. Too bad that was about the only thing that worked! Better luck next time DC.