Stunning Visuals Cannot Atone for Lackluster Storyline and Plot Holes Galore

Rating: 5/10 (7 August 2016)

Before reading this, know that I was incredibly hyped to see this and am a completely unbiased lover of both DC/Marvel and I won't be making any comparisons to the latter as that's completely unnecessary. This was a movie I was more excited to see than I was even BvS or Civil War. That says a lot for the marketing of the film.
Let me start by saying that the only characters I ended up actually caring about were Harley Quinn and Deadshot. The origins were a convoluted mess of cut scenes and probably would've better played out in order than an array of flashbacks. I put aside the poor editing as everything was still contained but from the flashbacks I now wish that they would've done an origin movie on either or both Harley and how she and the Joker fell in love, or Deadshot and how he came to become the hit-man for hire before ultimately being captured by Batman. The rest of the squad honestly can be surmised relatively quickly in flashbacks and that's fine.
That aside, the movie starts off well but quickly begins to decline as the introduction of all these characters begins to drag. One error I noted immediately was how neither Slipknot nor Katana were mentioned in the briefing at the beginning and, if we're being true to reality, they should've been, but somehow they just...show up. Perhaps that was part of the re-shoots so I'll assume their inclusion was something added later on. So what right?
Plot holes all begin with Enchantress and whatever the heck that "machine" is that she's building, which is basically just a lightning bolt with debris and crushed cars rotating around it, which conveniently takes the entire amount of time for the Suicide Squad to A) reach Waller and B) reach her. If Enchantress could teleport everywhere in a flash, such as when she retrieved that "impossible to get" book of military strategies, why didn't she just teleport to Waller, grab her with her newfound power granted her via her brother, and then just plug her into said "machine" for info and then just teleport to each of these places and lay bombs and blow them all simultaneously? Maybe that's stretching the realm of possibility but I don't think it would've taken her as long as it did to build said machine, etc.
Next plot hole, if Waller was going to call a chopper...why did she need the squad to come retrieve her? That part made absolutely no sense. Why didn't Waller have the other clay doll containing Enchantress's brother locked away in the same box instead of, idk, in the top of her closet?! The bar scene was atrociously lame. Somehow, we went from drinking and realizing the world's going to end to hearing Diablo's sob story of how he killed his wife and kids. It was endearingly heartbreaking moment for his character but the lead-in was weirdly played out. Then we turn to Harley, whom I've never so much as thought to have a serious moment save for before when she was a psychiatrist, suddenly tell him to "own that sh*t." It fell very oddly upon my ears and came across more cheesy than anything.
The cheesy lines don't end there. Being from the south and hearing Flagg, I kept wondering what exact region in the south he was supposed to be from? Accents aside, Flagg had his fair share of cheesy dialogue, but perhaps cheesier and more unexplainable was how Diablo, after only a few hours with this group, suddenly considers them family. Enchantress says things like "You don't have the balls!" which is a bit weird coming from an ancient all powerful god-like witch.
More plot holes: how the heck is a God defeated by a bomb? And how did they know that that would work when Diablo already has his fiery hand, not only inside his chest, but actually burning his face, wasn't stopping him? How is he not immortal when Katana chops off his hand and it grows back but somehow a bomb takes him out? It didn't add up. The machine Enchantress created is somehow stopped by a pack of stick dynamite ignited by Deadshot? Why didn't she teleport and grab the pack? How did Harley know to throw a gun to Deadshot when he screamed her name? Was Killer Croc's only purpose to throw said bag of dynamite when Flagg easily could've done the same? What purpose did Captain Boomerang even serve? He seemed all but expendable in the grand scheme of things. At least Deadshot can replace half of Flagg's army.
I feel I have to see more of Leto's Joker to really formulate a true opinion of him but I liked him from what I saw. I think Ledger's Joker is a better approach on a more sociopathic Joker but Leto's could be truer to the psychotic, crazy, and fun side of Joker. I need more. Batman appearing in the film was pretty awesome. Affleck has given a very true to comic version of the Dark Knight and I couldn't be happier with his performance. I really want to see more scenes between his Batman and Leto's Joker. The ending and the mid- credits scenes were great.
It wasn't the worst film in the world, but there are just so many unanswered questions and the fact is, it had so much potential to be BETTER. It came across very sloppy and jumbled but Deadshot and Harley were very fun to watch and actually made me miss Saturday morning cartoons. I do hope DC gets on track and starts making coherent films that flow better. This was the most fun out of the DCEU thus far for sure, but please just take care of the little things and get this train moving. I don't want this to be a preview of what we have to look forward to from Justice League.