Review of Suicide Squad (2016) by Ljhayes — 15 Aug 2016

I can't call this a bad film, I actually think it's the best DCEU film to date but it has a lot of flaws.

The acting is solid (The first time I've ever thought Jai Courtney was good!!!) and the sound track is pretty good to but narratively the whole thing plays out like a movie adaptation of a video game that doesn't exist.

The first half raised my expectations high featuring a cool recruiting montage with the exposition weaved in pretty smoothly but about half way through you start to notice some really choppy editing.

Like I say, the actors all do a good job but the characters motivations and morality all get really jumbled up and the relationship between the Suicide Squad members is kind of jarring. They barely even know each other and then about an hour into the film suddenly they become incredibly close out of no where, as if there was an important bonding scene for them that was cut out at the last minute and they didn't have time to smooth it over.

The villain is nothing special really. She has the same plan that several other comic book movie villains have had in the past few years, that being to use an army of disposable drones to take over the world with the help of a giant blue beam shooting into the sky (because we haven't seen enough of those.).

Jared Leto's Joker is cool but he's barely in it. After they've been hyping this character up for over a year I was expecting more than 7 or 8 minutes.

There's fun to be had with this film, it has good moments and it looks pretty but it's just kind of a mess. All the raw components are there to make a quality movie but it just feels really cobbled together.