AUGUST 26, 2016
You may have noticed that you haven’t seen very many movies rated C or D on this website. It’s not that I’m lenient (nothing could be farther from the truth), but I’m not one of those critics who breeze into free screenings of the latest movie. Every movie that I review, I pay for, and frankly I don’t want to pay for crap movies.
I had heard that “Suicide Squad” was crap, so I planned to skip it. But it has been #1 at the box-office three weekends in a row and featured mostly new characters (at least to me), so I decided finally to give it a try. The turf war between the House of Marvel (“The Avengers,” Thor,” etc.) and the House of DC Comics (“Man of Steel,” “Batman vs. Superman,” etc.) has continued to rage all year in the superhero world, and though I don’t give a hooey either way, I did want to get into the conversation by catching “Suicide Squad.”
Is it bad? Yes. Is it “Batman vs. Superman” bad? Not quite, but close. It’s a DC Comics’ attempt to make a Marvel movie, but it doesn’t come close to working.
The first hour is almost entirely devoted to introducing the characters. The premise of “Suicide Squad” is that government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis at her sternest) assembles a group of easily disposable bad guys to carry out high-risk missions. There’s Deadshot (Will Smith), an expert marksman with daddy/daughter issues; Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) the former psychiatrist to The Joker (Jared Leto) who falls in love with him and becomes bad herself; El Diablo (Jay Rodriguez), a pyrokinetic gangster with more sad family backstory; Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an Aussie thief who uses said weapon who should be more fun but isn’t; Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, a wonderful actor buried under pounds of make-up), a reptilian figure who just growls a lot; Katana (Karen Fukuhara), an expert swordswoman who believes the souls of her victims are in her sword (whatever); and Slipknot (Adam Beach) who’s not around long enough to worry about.
The second (very long) hour is devoted to their mission which is to stop The Enchantress from taking over the world. (Couldn’t someone come up with a more diobolical name than The Enchantress?) She is actually a witch inhabiting the body of archaeologist Dr. June Moore (Cara Delevingne), who is the girlfriend of Col. Rick Flagg (Joel Kinneman), who just happens to be leading the Suicide Squad. Got it? I’m exhausted just writing about it.
The usual computer-generated mayhem erupts with an ending that promises a sequel. (Can’t wait.) What’s a shame about “Suicide Squad” is that it wastes the talents of David Ayer, a terrific director who made the first-rate World War II tank movie “Fury” with Brad Pitt in 2014 and an excellent cop-on-the-beat movie “End of Watch” with Jake Gyllenhaal in 2012. How he got hooked up with this nonsense is anyone’s guess, but I blame Zack Snyder, the mastermind of the DC Comics movie universe who directed the awful “Man of Steel” and the even worse “Batman vs. Superman.”
A few actors manage to escape this drivel. Smith (who has not been good lately but is fine here) and Davis (always dependable) survive nicely, but the sole breakout star here is Margot Robbie, the Australian actress who has largely been used as a kewpie doll in her previous roles in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Focus,” but here she shows some serious acting chops while having an absolute blast as the baseball bat-wielding Harley Quinn. She is having the kind of fun in the role that we wish we were having.
Is “Suicide Squad” worth 123 minutes of your time? Absolutely not. But if you must go, keep your eyes on Robbie, and she will get you through this mess and help you leave with a smile on your face.
GRADE: C-
