After seeing the trailer showing DC’s most eclectic superbad team throwing out zingy one-liners and doing wild stunts to the tune of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” you’d expect Suicide Squad to be a fun, subversive romp brought to life with neon-laced style. And it certainly is… for the first act of the movie. From there, it loses its zany charm and becomes something familiar, unexciting, and, worst of all, predictable. There are some enjoyable elements, namely certain standout performances from the star-studded cast, but that’s not quite enough to prop up the uninspired plot.

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Hard-ass Amanda Waller sees the arrival of Superman as a wake-up call. She uses the fear his power instills to bully the U.S. Government into letting her assemble Task Force X, a group of their worst incarcerated criminals. The intent is to send the team on suicide missions against super-powered threats in exchange for time off their rather lengthy sentences. Thus, the movie enters its best stretch as we cue the stylistic intros for hitman-for-hire Deadshot (Will Smith), violent and Joker-obsessed Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), black-magic witch Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), tatted-up pyro El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), human crocodile Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and Australian pile of useless Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney).Even though the film makes no attempt to explain why each member’s skills are valuable, you can see why Deadshot’s unerring aim, Harley’s underworld intel, Croc’s monstrous strength and the rest would be an asset on a mission, but Boomer sticks out as particularly inept. In the comic book by John Ostrander and Luke McDonnell, his antagonistic, scummy personality was a hilarious highlight and he proved himself on the battlefield with his deadly boomerangs, but the movie makes such little use of him it’s a wonder he was included at all.It’s when the Squad goes on their first (and only) mission to stop a vague, world-ending scheme that the movie takes a nosedive. That this is about 20 minutes in is not a good sign. It’s never quite clear what the mission is or how they’re going about attaining their goal. Action scenes happen, but they’re little more than time-filling montages as we watch the team bulldoze through dozens of henchmen that pose zero threat, even to the guy with the boomerangs. There’s never a sense that this specialized team was truly needed for this particular mission, especially because team leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) also brought along a squad of elite, obedient troopers with big machine guns.Kinnaman’s Flag lacks the commanding presence you’d expect from someone who needs to keep a group of murderers, thieves and psychopaths in line. The romance between his character and June Moone (the human host of Enchantress) fails to inspire anything but an eyeroll.Enchantress herself is one misfire after another. A powerful, unpredictable character in the source material, she becomes a generic spellcaster proclaiming loud mystic things in the movie. She’s also one of few female characters to have a sensible costume in the comics, only for the filmmakers turn her into a bikini-wearing witch who must kiss men to put them under her thrall. Delevingne’s talents are put to poor use as her character either acts the frail love interest as Moone or the bland sorceress as Enchantress.Not much is made of El Diablo, who starts with the potential to be a sleeper hit character. His story beats and revelations feel crammed in, ruining their appeal. And even though we learn that El Diablo is more than he appears to be, it’s hard to truly care at that point in the movie.So little is done for Slipknot that it’s hard to believe I’m even taking the time to write this sentence about him.Smith’s Deadshot is the most well-rounded character, although his “I’m not so bad because I love my daughter” story arc veers to the cheesy side. That’s one example of a larger problem: the writing aims to manipulate your emotions instead of engage them. Yet Deadshot’s smugness is endearing, and it goes a long way in making Suicide Squad somewhat enjoyable despite its flaws.Viola Davis completely owns the role of Waller. Unflinching, uncompromising, and downright mean. She reeks of preparedness and shrewd intelligence. A brazen, unstoppable woman with steely determination. She dominates everyone she shares a scene with and makes them look ten times as small. It’s when the Squad embarks on their mission and she takes a backseat that the movie noticeably loses its steam. If the DC Extended Universe wants to flourish and expand, it would do well to make Waller an integral part of it.Robbie’s Harley Quinn is not the scene-stealer the trailers would have you believe. For as popular as the character has become since her Batman: The Animated Series debut, it’s hard to imagine anyone could do her justice, but Robbie certainly looks the part and dances the line of sincerely cheery and seriously crazy quite well. It’s when it comes to landing her numerous jokes that things fall a bit flat, her comedic energy and timing not quite right. That said, her presence among the self-serious team members is a welcome one, and even though they’re under constant threat of death, she keeps things lively with her bubbly yet deranged attitude.Quinn’s perverse relationship with the Joker (Jared Leto) is a core element of her story. It’s never a dull moment when they share the screen together. However, we never learn why she fell in love with the Joker. From their earliest flashback, she is completely obsessed with him, leaving out the key factor of how someone could ever fall for the most psychotic and vicious of all villains.While the Joker does get a decent bit of screen time, his subplot abruptly cuts across the movie rather than move in tandem with it, never amounting to anything of substance. His character feels forced upon the movie rather than smartly woven into it. The animated feature Batman: Assault on Arkham saw the Suicide Squad battling Batman on one side and the Joker on the other, which, looking back, seems like the smarter way to play it.Leto’s performance as the Joker is unnerving and full of oddities. Don’t expect an explanation for all the tattoos and those teeth; he comes fully formed as the Clown Prince of Crime, this time with a prison gangster spin. He feels dangerous and off-kilter, as you’d expect, but he never gets a “Want to know how I got these scars?” sequence. Maybe that’s because this isn’t his story, as he’s more an accent to Harley Quinn’s arc, but it also feels strange to have a new movie Joker that doesn’t make a big impact. Leto’s behind-the-scenes antics involving rats and used condoms would lead you to believe we were getting a much more extreme version of the Joker.With the Joker not being utilized as the main villain, we’re instead forced to endure some out-of-left-field antagonists that are a perfect example of everything we don’t like about comic book movie villains. Generic plan, uncompelling motive, immediately forgettable. The comic book saw the Squad being sent on black ops missions into countries “real” superheroes couldn’t touch, where they battled superpowered terrorists while trying not to cause an international incident. The threat they face in the movie feels a better fit for the talents of the Ghostbusters rather than a secret hit squad whose expertise lie with bullets and knives.With the movie featuring a band of misfits in way over their heads, accompanied by a soundtrack of pop hits, it’s hard to not compare Suicide Squad to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. As if to hammer home that Squad is also supposed to be a quirky good time, Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” is also used, although in less compelling fashion than in Guardians. In fact, all the songs in Squad are hit or miss, with only a few fitting in well.This isn’t to say that Squad is trying to be Guardians, far from it, but where Guardians shined is where Squad missed: making its cast of peculiar characters relatable and entertaining. At least one Squad member is used as nothing but cannon fodder. Others, like Katana and Croc, only exist to kill things, with any attempt to service their characters coming off as awkward. There’s a lack of cohesion, purpose and meaning behind the team. There’s a moment of unity at the end, as you’d expect, but it doesn’t feel earned.The Suicide Squad, by design, isn’t supposed to inspire a feeling of rallying heroism like when the Avengers assemble, but the team members should make us feel something. The movie beats us over the head with the idea that these folks are truly despicable, and then it goes out of its way to show us they’re not so bad, and that’s normally when a movie like this hooks you, but instead it lands in an uninteresting middle ground. There’s tragedy and dramatic irony to their story, but the movie glosses over it instead of sinking its teeth in.The movie's costume designer did a bang-up job translating a group of DC's wackier characters into the real world. The designs both embrace each original concept and give everyone some unexpected flair. They look like a cool group of bad people. But the inspired clothing choices aren't enough to make up for the movie's lack of ingenuity, especially in the latter two-thirds. Every “twist” that comes, if you can even call them that, can be seen a mile away, and none seismically affect the trajectory of the plot or the emotions of the characters. For a movie called Suicide Squad, it feels strange for it to play everything so safe.The movie makes blatant yet fun ties to the rest of the DCEU, and not just the appearance of Batman glimpsed in the trailers. There’s also a post-credits scene that won’t exactly get you pumped for what’s next as much as remind you there are still more movies to come. As a chapter in a larger story of interconnected movies, it’s hard to say how Suicide Squad fits in. It doesn’t bend over backwards to set up other movies, one of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s biggest sins, which is a relief. And it gifts us a few standout characters that could show up as anti-heroes or villains in upcoming DC flicks, or even spin off into their own feature. Ultimately, Suicide Squad never amounts to much as a film, and so what looked to be a much-needed course correction for the DCEU has instead become the third strike against it.