Logan Sork Film Reviews
Suicide Squad
After the mixed reception to the darker tone of Batman V Superman, Warner Bros. was under the impression that their franchise was in need of some much-needed fun. In response to this, massive changes were made to their upcoming Suicide Squad in order to fit the tone of the marketing, which had been marketed as a fun teaming up film complete with catchy songs, wacky characters and plenty of fun jokes to spare. It’s just a shame that in the process of trying to make a fun experience, they forgot to make it a good one. Unfortunately, in trying to make Suicide Squad a brighter and fun movie than it was, it ultimately resulted in a chaotic mess of a movie. With terrible editing, thin plot and characters and a seemingly random barrage of pop-songs Suicide Squad ultimately feels more like a two-hour long music video than an actual movie.
Suicide Squad is directed by David Ayer and is the third installment in the DC Extended Universe. The film centers around a government task force assembled by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to protect the world from the rising meta-human threats after the emergence of Superman. The group consists of villains from the world who were captured and forced to do the will of the government in exchange for time off of their sentences- if they tried to escape however, they would die. The group consists of Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Deadshot (Will Smith), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and other captured villains. The task force must come together to stop the evil Enchantress (Cara Delavigne) from destroying all life on the planet. Meanwhile, Harley’s boyfriend, The Joker (Jared Leto), puts his own plan into action as he tries to rescue his love.
Despite the overwhelmingly bad elements of the film, there are a couple of glimmers to be found here. The cast for the most part is really good and extremely likable, with the real standouts being Robbie, Smith and Davis who bring a real sense of devilish fun and charisma to their roles. There are a couple of interesting flashback sequences that help build upon certain characters in the squad and were a real pleasure to see for fans of the comics. The costume and makeup team really outdid themselves here There are also some fun action sequences and a couple of great moments in which the squad members banter with each other.
Unfortunately, while there are some great cast members here, the others are left in the dust by a story that simply can’t support all of these characters. The film spends the first twenty or so minutes just introducing the characters and most of them are throw away cut outs that had little to no development. The film would’ve felt more focused if they trimmed down the team roster to just the essentials and spent more time on developing them instead of introducing more useless characters.
Because of the relatively thin narrative and multitude of characters it has to juggle, the film’s editing and action sequences suffer because of this. Due to the need to give so many characters personality, spotlight moments and even some flashbacks, the film feels like it was edited using a chainsaw. Randomly jumping back and forth between character moments chaotic action sequences an flashbacks, the film feels like it has no rhythm and the addition of random pop songs in substitution of actual fun only muddies the mix even further. Because of the chaotic editing, the whole film feels scatterbrained and unfocused and could’ve easily been remedied by dropping some characters and other useless plot lines.
In the end, Suicide Squad is by no means unwatchable. It has enough fun characters, fun action sequences and an overall good vibe that it doesn’t make we want to kill myself whenever I’m watching it. But if you’re looking for a film with a gripping story, well developed characters and an overall well-constructed film from a technical standpoint, then I’m afraid you won’t be able to find any of that in this mess of a film.
4/10