'Suicide Squad' - Movie Review

'Suicide Squad'
U/A; Action, Adventure, Comedy
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Joel Kinnaman, Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis, Common, Ben Affleck, Ike Barinholtz, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Scott Eastwood, Jay Hernandez, Adam Beach, Ezra Miller
Rating:

This David ('Fury') Ayer directed DC Comic series fan primer was meant to whet the appetite before 'Justice League' but even that appears to be too high a bar to match up to. The gap between 'Batman v Superman' and 'The Justice League' just got wider in fact with this unedifying, spasmodic and inconsistent attempt at action noir.

The DC comic series highlighting a bunch of super villains given a shot at redemption had the potential for interesting, never-seen-before onscreen heroics but the scripting team lead by Justin Marks fails to write up a storm. And the helming is so scattered and unreasonable that you just don't get involved in the hyper-vandalism passing off as retrospective justice. Even Batman(Ben Affleck)'s cameo representation for the upcoming 'Justice League' leaves little impact on the discerning viewer.

The problem really lies in the fact that Ayers and team try to do too much instead of concentrating on the basics. The Prologue as exposition takes way too long, the set-up is feeble and the climax fails to rouse up a frenzy. The all star team of assembled super-villains appears to be quite clueless about using their meta-skills. Even the designated villain among super villains comes back from the dead a few times too many to be plausible. It's a jamboree that appears to be plucked out straight from Bollywood masala mixes.

The thin largely blurred lines between good and evil is definitely one of the problems here. The conviction is sorely missing from the engagement. The ancient evil enchantress residing in the body of a beautiful archaeologist June Moone (Cara Delevingne) is the key to controlling the rest of the sociopathic meta-humans assigned to Waller (Viola Davis) who has taken on the role of assembling the super team to fight extra-terrestrial evil. But fighting fire with bombast and attitude doesn't amount to a good thing. The mutant fire-power of the assemblage doesn't quite get the annihilating exposure it deserves. Col Flag (Joel Kinnaman) who manages the team is merely a foot soldier controlled by his desire for the archaeologist. In a graphic novel that might be logical but on screen the tie-up appears ridiculous. And to add to that they have to fight faceless zombies and minions being mass produced by the Enchantress (an idea that has long lost it's appeal after a recent spate of repetitions in movies like 'Ghostbusters' and the like).

The cast of big names like Will Smith (as Deadshot), Jared Leto (as Joker), Margot Robbie (as crazed Harley Quinn), Jay Hernandez (as fire-starter Diablo) Viola Davis (as Govt hard-ass Amanda Waller), Adewale Akinnuoye-Akbaje (as Killer Croc), Jay Courtney (Boomerang) has loads of charisma but their onscreen shenanigans doesn't give their talent the due respect it deserves save for Robbie, who even in a scatter-brained role does enough damage to leave you reeling. Given the high expectations raised from the intriguing all-out promotions, 'Suicide Squad' may be able to get in an initial but long term prospects are quite questionable. While the humor is low-lying and intermittent, the action doesn't have much kinesis and the narrative layout is more desperate than intelligent. This is a messy mash-up that has neither style nor real substance to make it exciting enough. For sure this is nowhere near as cool or nihilistically humorous as 'Deadpool.'