Sabotage

Rating: 4/10 (7 August 2016)

If anything, Suicide Squad should be viewed as a cautionary tale for eager film students worried about the perversion of their vision by crass, avaricious and abusive film executives and studios. Thus far Director David Ayer has been towing the line, but there's no telling if and when he'll be lobbing accusations of studio meddling in the near future. Somewhere deep, deep, deep, deep down in the ashy crevasses of this film's soul, lies a good movie. One that has no need for contrived plots and flashbacks doubling as character development. Yet as it stands, the theatrical version of this set of tangentially related scenes is nothing more than a floppy, limping, barely-alive footnote in the joyless black parade that is the DC Extended Universe. At this point the only argument that can be made in favor of this film's merits is that it's not Batman Vs. Superman (2016).
The Suicide Squad is the brain child of one Amanda Waller (Davis), an ambitious government official who wants to pilot a Black Ops team of arch-criminals who can go into high-risk situations and do...stuff. She recruits Col. Rick Flag (Kinnaman) to train and lead the team which includes "Metahumans" Killer Croc (Akinnuoye-Agbaje), El Diablo (Hernandez) and Dr. June Moone aka Enchantress (Delevingne). Also along for the ride are professional criminals Deadshot (Smith), Captain Boomerang (Courtney) and Slipknot (Beach) as well as Flag's sword wielding bodyguard Katana (Fukuhara). The plot then bends over backwards to get these guys unchained and let loose into Midway City with the Joker (Leto) in hot pursuit so he can rescue the team's only real liability Harley Quinn (Robbie) who is there because...wait, why is she on the team again?
If the first rule of visual storytelling is "don't tell the audience what they already know," then this movie not only breaks that rule but sets it on fire then stomps on it. We are introduced to our anti-heroes, their arsenals and their motivations for accepting such a cockamamie scheme a handful of times. At one point the film straight up brings out the files on them, followed by on-the-nose theme music, personifying tile cards and stats resembling a "choose your character" mod on a cheap video game. Then we get the flashbacks oh the flashbacks, which are not there to service the story at all but are there to remind you whether not you like it, Jared Leto is going to be playing the Joker for a while and Ben Affleck is still Batman.
And what of The Joker whose appearance in this movie has been hyped to the point of frenzy? Well if he's the reason you came to see Suicide Squad then you're in for a bad case of blue balls. The man is barely in this film, sharing what little screen-time he has with Harley, a gaggle of Panda-suit wearing henchmen and Common. When he is on screen he lurches and leers but does very little that's scary, funny or even remotely interesting.
Likewise Harley is at her best a pale imitation of Heath Ledger's Joker, interjecting El Diablo's tragic backstory with a nihilistic "own that s**t" that she herself doesn't even believe. At her worst though she's a skimpy, studio assembled, polyester sex pot whose strength is undermined by an abusive romance that has pockmarked many a comic book. She holds her own in a few fights and actress Margot Robbie does seem to be having some fun, but the image of her perched atop a wrecked taxi in the rain bemoaning the loss of her "puddin" is enough to dismantle the entire idea that she can be her own character.
There are a few standouts including Jai Courtney as the flamboyantly named Captain Boomerang. He's a cut-and-run jerk through and through and revels in the douche-baggery of his own making. Plus since he's not exactly part of the squads inner-ring, he's immune to the film telling us what he's about three or four times. Will Smith's Deadshot character arc is treated with a modicum of respect which is aptly complimented by the man actually trying for the first time in ten years. Yet even then you can tell that there was a lot of him left on the cutting room floor. The film settles for giving the character the complexity of an average paint-by-numbers anti-hero with a secret heart of gold. A heart that's not coaxed out by anything more substantial than the budding bromance between himself and Col. Flag.
Months of rumored extensive re-shoots have yielded the exact same problems that plagued DC's last attempt to compete with Marvel. Nearly every cut in this film feels like a battle between David Ayer, studio heads and Executive Producer Zack Snyder in an attempt to conform to a PG-13 rating, pander to the fans and keep the look and feel of the larger universe they plan to somehow cobble together. Unlike Batman V. Board of Education's reddit inspired pretentiousness, Suicide Squad has a longing unrequited desire to just have some fun. Yet any fun to be had is over-complicated by franchise maintenance and a villain reveal that could have been avoided if Amanda Waller had simply scrapped her Black Ops team at conception. Well, at least Suicide Squad has the distinction of casting Adam Beach playing the first First Nation hero in a mainstream superhero film...oh wait.