Suicide Squad (2016)

When a bad movie is mixed with expectations, then the only result can be a huge amount of disappointment. Which in reality, is actually worse than just a bad movie, because it crushes the hopes and dreams that had been created for a possible future including that could-have-been-great-movie. Suicide Squad is that movie.

In case you haven’t heard, Suicide Squad premiered and people went mad. And well, I’m one of those people because I went to see the movie on its pre-opening night (in a sold out theater), and expected to see greatness. Well, if not greatness, then maybe just a really fun and entertaining comic book movie that will, in male terms, give me at least a semi. Well, bye-bye boners and hopes of orgasms, because the only thing I got during the Suicide Squad screening was a punch in the gut with possible internal bleeding.

The movie, and let me try to calm myself before I explode, was bad and the more I think about it, the more I dislike it. Sure, I gave it a 2,5 out of 5, and at the end of the day, that’s almost a fair rating, but the more I think about it, the more I’m angered by the fact that so much money can result in such a big-ass mess! And that’s what Suicide Squad is, a mess, a chopped up, an incoherent two hour mess, that has small moments of hope in the beginning that slowly fade and get destroyed, what I assume, by corporate idiocy.

Suicide Squad had the luck to follow the failure Batman vs. Superman, which I have been told, I’m lucky to have not seen, and that was its biggest downfall. The suits came together, got so scared that they won’t make any money, threw some money around, and changed the outcome of Suicide Squad to the worse. And that’s the story I’m going to stick with, the story how a movie, that was most likely better than the final outcome, got re-shooted and re-edited into a shitty mess. All because some suits got scared, we got fucked and Suicide Squad lands into the Green Lantern and Fantastic Four territory of comic book movies…

Even among the mess, Margot Robbie and Jared Leto were trying their hardest to give us great performances, and they succeeded. Harley Quinn and the Joker were great, even though the material they had to work with, maybe not so much. And it’s sad that their story line got chopped up, thrown into flashbacks!, and sugarcoated, because it didn’t feel as mental and psychotic as I thought it was going to be. And even though my favorite moment in the movie was when Quin was jumping off a roof to be with the Joker, I expected so much more from that couple in the long run. And the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that a separate movie of Harley and the Joker would have been brilliant – an R-rated story of a dysfunctional relationship with Margot Robbie and Jared Leto for two hours just bringing it! And the biggest disappointment, and I think I’m not the only one who thinks this, was that the Joker wasn’t included as much at all and instead of him as the bad guy we got a weird-dance-move-Enchantress (Cara Delevingne).

What stood out the most, and what I already mentioned, was the messy plot, and that not only showed in the plot but also in the characters. I didn’t really enjoy most of the characters, though I did like Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley, the Joker and Boomerang (Jai Courtney), or at least most of their moments. The rest of the characters felt like fill ins and they didn’t seem to have any emotion behind them. And then one guy shows up for 2 minutes to get killed off! What’s the point? So we get play-to-play demonstration what the chip in the neck little bomb will do to our heroes? I don’t need that visual proof after they spend time explaining what the thing does! And that’s what the movie does a lot, it thinks the viewer is stupid, and it makes things so simple and shallow.

Anyway, the ending of the movie was the worst, and I guess a lot of my anger is aimed towards that final act. Not only did the whole action seem lacking, and the rescue mission quite frankly pointless in the long run, Viola Davis’ character development was freaking crazy! Not only did she just shoot her employees, but she got probed with some weird alien tentacles, and walked it off like it was nothing. Whilst her white jacket stayed spotless… Yeah, well, continuity doesn’t matter really, nor logic, nor common sense, apparently.

Then we have my favorite, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag. Now.. he is still my favorite because I like to look at him, but oh boy, was his character boring. Like, sure, love the possessed woman, and command the squad of bad guys, but please be more interesting while doing so. Which also goes for his possessed girlfriend June Moone (Delevingne), who despite some cool visual effects (the hand holding looked dope as fuck!), was again another boring character/villain who had no actual plan. She is 6000 years old, wakes up, finds that civilization has evolved, decides to destroy it? Why does it sound familiar.. oh yeah, En Sabah Nur (X-Men Apocalypse). And let’s not forget that every solution at the end to kill the bad guys (the bad lady also had a big brother with octopus hands) involved a bomb.. cause that’s not boring at all.

To end things, which have gone on too long anyway, I must say my anger is becoming more manageable and I think after some time, I will be less and less angry. I might be less mad at it being so messy, yet, I’m sure, even after a few years, I will still be very disappointed. The final edit, which I assume is many levels worse than the original, is a very soft movie, with many flaws. The characters are made soft, and the outcome is made soft, and the rating is soft, and that is something that a movie about bad guys who go on a suicide mission is not about! The movie should be R-rated (like Jared Leto wanted it to be), it should have blood, teeth flying, the Joker being all crazy and torturing Harley, and the Suicide Squad should be a group of really bad guys doing some really good things! Instead we get a soft representation of guys who have done some bad things, being put together by a really bad woman (Davis), and lead by a very boring man (Kinnaman),  and it’s just.. soft, boring and at the end, still so annoyingly messy.

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(A week later:) I need to point out that Deadshot was pretty good, Will Smith oozes charisma and he can do no harm. Also, Ike Barinholtz character was funny, no doubt about that! But I didn’t really like Diablo, though I have a soft spot for Jay Hernandez ever since I watched Crazy/Beautiful. The soundtrack was lukewarm, though I do love Twenty One Pilots! The visuals were also okay, the only standout, like I mentioned, the effects the Enchantress had. Other than that, it’s been a week since I saw it, and I’m less angry but still so disappointed.