Suicide Squad: What Was DC Thinking?
Review by Matthew Erman
Last night I saw Suicide Squad at Columbus’s South Drive-In. If you’re going to see this movie, I recommend going to the drive-in – that way no one will yell at you for audibly expressing your disappointment. The double feature was Lights Out.
Suicide Squad is Warner Bros. newest entry in their Marvel-esque shared universe movie series and the follow up to Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The movie features an “ensemble” cast led by Will Smith and Margot Robbie.
Margot Robbie shines having the most amount of fun as the fan-favorite character, Harley Quinn, the jilted and sociopathic lover to Jared Leto’s Joker.
Interestingly, the stars (Will Smith and Margot Robbie) of the movie have the least to do with the plot. Which is one of the biggest complaints I have with the film. Infact, in a strange twist none of the Suicide Squad really matter. Seriously, they are all completely inconsequential to the major plot, which is as decipherable as The Voynich Manuscript.
How could the plot be so poor you ask? Well, let me try and explain it:
[SPOILERS]
Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), head of some nondescript government agency, puts together a team of murderers and super-villains because “what if the next Superman was a terrorist.”
This outrageous initiative gets approved after Amanda Waller brings an ancient and powerful witch, The Enchantress played Cara Delevingne, into a board room meeting where Waller demonstrates how awesome this is by getting the witch to magically steal secret defense plans from Iran. She can do this because she stole the witch’s magical heart. I’m not kidding. These are plot points.
Also, the witch is actually a possessed archeologist in love with Rick Flagg (played by Joel Kinnaman), a decorated soldier, who’ll soon ends up being the most grating character in the film. His whole character arc can be summed into, “I’m not any fun and I’m not okay with bad guys.” to “I’m okay with bad guys.”
This is the first…45 minutes? The sheer amount of exposition to justify this nonsense is absurd. It gets worse after all the characters have had their comic-book style intros (complete with flashy graphics and #coolmusic.)
Once the exposition is over, the plot suddenly starts and boy howdy does it just start. For no apparent reason, The Enchantress steals her heart back after she kills herself (my reading of this scene has brought up some issues with the readers, I’d like some clarification on this scene in particular in the comments.) I really can’t piece together what exactly happened, then she goes to an underground metro where she revives her ancient warlock brother, a CGI mess, by possessing a random dude in the bathroom. We are left in the dark what her plans are, why she is doing this and why she waited so long to do so. The explanation of this scene is shown nearly 45 minutes later, as a flashback where she does infact tell the audience her motivations, but by that point who cares, the movie is nearly over and we’re just then learning about the point of the villain’s arc.
Oh, while all of this is happening we’re also following Jared Leto’s middling portrayal of The Joker, as he searches for his lost love, Harley Quinn. These sequences are cut between present and past and are as confusing as they are mediocre.
Once all this happens, Waller has an excuse to send in her dumpy team of forgotten villains and no-names (one of which is blown up thirty-five seconds into the mission.) And so then begins the next hour and fifteen minutes where #coolmusic is played over our “heroes” shooting at goopy man monsters.
Will Smith is ever present as Deadshot, a fourth-rate Batman villain. His whole thing is he can shoot anything and never miss. Despite how boring his character sounds, he ends up giving us some classic Will Smith charm and demonstrates why he was such a force in the late 90’s. Which is funny because this often feels like a movie cut straight from 1997, in that it misses the point, and the reason for it to even exist.
Two hours later, the bad guy is defeated and everyone gets unjustifiably emotional, roll credits, post-credits scene, roll credits again. You will leave confused, disappointed and also empty. It leaves you empty inside. It manages to be so big and dumb that you can’t enjoy it.
Suicide Squad is the worst feature film Warner Bros. have put out under the “DC Shared Universe” banner. It is poorly written and poorly edited and shares many of the same problems of Batman V. Superman. I don’t understand how Warner Bros. keep doing this.
Suicide Squad has a 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Image Courtesy by Warner Bros.
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