Suicide Squandered

Suicide Squad is in no uncertain terms utterly awful. It’s a Movie about a group of bad guys recruited by a government agency to fight a bigger bad guy. It’s set in fictional ‘Midway City’, Probably because the DCU is rapidly running out of places it can level to the ground and rebuild on a twelve month cycle. Its story is a one dimensional plot that’s made even more tedious by its awful pacing and tonal inconsistency. But this worst thing is: the totally flat story it tells might be the lesser of the movies many evils.

Suicide Squad’s Cast is amazing. Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Joel Kinnaman give fantastic performances and a special mention must go to Viola Davis who is the movie’s only consistent high point. But good performances are only ever as good as the movies writing and here the script is truly awful. Every single character is flat and uninspired. Not a single character (except Amanda Waller ) stands out for the right reasons and characters that deserve a good portrayal definitely don’t see one here. The writing is overly expositional and constantly trying to throw in more “attitude” than ever feels natural in the movie. By the end of its overly long run time the whole script feels tired and bloated.

This is made worse by the movies clunky editing. The film is utterly crammed, meaning there isn’t a second of breathing room. From the word go it’s loud and obnoxious, there’s no subtly, no solemnity and certainly no silence. It’s full of continuity errors and the cuts from scene to scene often feel much too sudden, hard and abrupt. All of this means that there’s no emotional build and absolutely no pay off, the few small character moments the film does have are quickly lost to a constant overflow of boring exposition and moronic dialogue.

It’s done this way, one must assume, to enhance the “punky” attitude that the movie is shooting for. But what little style the film does have is purely a top coat, its skin deep at best. It’s neon titles and use of loud guitar driven music are noticeable, but they bring very little punch to an already flat film. It’s easy to see that at some point this started life as a dark and brooding villain piece, similar in tone to Batman Vs Superman, and there isn’t enough punk, or frankly enough fun, to make the audience forget what it once was.

But the worst thing about this movie is how notably regressive it is towards it’s female characters and, in fact, women in general. Every character is dressed in proper battle armour, all except the women who fight the entire movie in little more than lingerie, this is made even more notable when the entire third act happens in an unexplained rainstorm just so that Harley’s bra will show through her paper thin t shirt. In fact the movie seems to see Harley as nothing more than a pair of breasts with some mental issues. She’s never given any serious character development and barely a scene goes by where she isn’t leered at by someone in the supporting cast. Considering how perfect Margot Robbie is for the role, it’s a great shame that this is all she gets to work with.

But the problem is more than just sex appeal there’s a general attitude of women coming second in this movie. Far too often it makes jokes about “you can’t hit women” “we should go on a date after this” or “go slap her on the ass and tell her to calm down” (which is Literally a line of dialogue from the movie!). If this is the intention of David Ayers then so be it. But if that is the case then Mr Ayers might want to take a second look at the film industry in 2016, because Suicide Squad definitely seems to be moving in the wrong direction and the characters it’s dealing with deserve far better than this.

Suicide squad is a bloated mess that’s trying too hard to be fun. It’s drawn out dialogue and Janky editing tells a story that’s one dimensional and full of more holes than one of Deadshot’s victims. With such a perfect cast it’s not hard to imagine how good this movie could have been and in light of that, Suicide Squad feels like a giant let down. But the worst part is just how insulting it is to its own characters, who deserved far more respect that Suicide Squad has shown them.

Suicide Squad scored: 1.2/10