Suicide Squad

I’m convinced that DC’s budding film universe is, in fact, a skewed, nightmarish alternate reality (an Elsewords universe, if you will). That would certainly explain why its version of Superman, who’s supposed to be the symbol of hope and righteousness, is instead a dour, mopey, hated figure, and why its Batman (Ben Affleck) is an obsessive, near-pathological zealot.

Through this lens, it makes sense that a movie starring the villains feels the most like a regular superhero story, and at least on that level, Suicide Squad is DC’s closest example to a comic book blockbuster done properly. It isn’t much greater than just average-level good, but give them a bit of credit: one picture at a time, they’re getting better, very slowly but surely.

The film takes place in the aftermath of the events of Batman v Superman. As preparation for the possibility of an evil superhuman threat, unscrupulous government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) proposes assembling a team of captured criminals with superpowers or otherwise exceptional abilities. The group consists of: sharpshooting assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), the Joker’s (Jared Leto) screw-loose lover Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), pyrokinetic ex-gangbanger El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Aussie bank robber Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), reptilian Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and martial artist Katana (Karen Fukuhara), all under the command of Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). The team is put to the test when another of Waller’s captives, the witch Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), unleashes her powers upon a city.

The plotting is a big mess. It’s very evident the picture was hacked up and put back together into what was considered the leanest and most marketable final product. So, pieces of backstories and dangling subplots litter the narrative. But at the very least, all the different threads that are there coalesce around a single point, even if it’s as completely simple a storyline as “kill the bad guy." That’s more than can be said for Batman v Superman, which seemed like six or seven different movies playing at once.

The casting is something of a mixed bag. Davis is tremendous, evoking a stubborn, love-to-hate vibe in the audience that’s totally appropriate. And Smith is his usual fun, funny self. As for the rest of the bunch, they’re mostly without a moment in the spotlight to call their own, victims of an overstuffed product cut down to a more sellable feature length. A few (Croc and Katana, especially) even the film seems to forget they're there until it needs their abilities. The weakest points, though, are the antagonists. Delevinge is just not a very good bad guy, as soulless as any empty CGI creation, and Leto’s Joker fulfills all the fears detractors have voiced since his design was revealed. He comes off as little more than the most vanilla of gangster tropes, only one who’s also an annoyingly obsessive Dark Knight fanboy who insists on constantly (and badly) imitating Heath Ledger’s iconic look and voice.

But all eyes were on Robbie’s Harley Quinn heading into this movie (in more ways than one), and the results on the screen leave me a little torn. It’s undoubtedly a funny, compelling performance that suggests she could carry a movie. But the picture treats her rather shabbily, the camera following her body, alternately tight-clothed or barely clothed, with a leering eye. Also, it retains the problematic depiction of her abusive relationship with the Joker as oddly romantic. The depiction could use a lot of work, but it’s a credit to Robbie that she’s able to deliver in spite of the limiting and objectifying parameters the film gave her. 

Suicide Squad’s messiness extends beyond just the storytelling and character unevenness. The structure is like that of a trailer, with manic cutting, random music snippets, and frequent audience priming and buildup, for payoffs that are mostly either delayed or underwhelming. The tone varies between an intense action movie, smartass comedy, black comedy, sad tragedy, and even horror movie with little consistency. Yet, from this mess emerges one thing that has so far eluded the DC films: fun. Loud, dumb, garish, not particularly exceptional or memorable, but fun nonetheless. That alone shows that DC is improving, even if only by increments per picture. At this rate, they might give Marvel a run for its money sometime this century.