Review of Suicide Squad (2016) by Theapplegnome — 14 Aug 2016

I might not agree with the fact that roughly 70 % of the audience seems to like this messy film (Rottentomatoes) – but it’s at least not a flop.

Suicide Squad – the film most of us couldn’t wait to see. The trailers looked awesome, crazy, highly inventive and just wow! But what did we get? A strong “meh”. About half of the first act (if not more…) is spent on character introductions. Just the structure and editing alone are very choppy. The story didn’t give anything impressive to the screen, most of the time. Sure, I must admit that I couldn’t wait to see all these characters in action, but even then it wasn’t enough. Yes some impressive action-pieces is on place, but they’re mostly uninventive. The pacing neither made it greater – there are serious issues when going from pure action, to slow dialog. Still; I admire the courage to have so many characters in one film – and they try to establish some depth to the main characters. I mostly enjoyed all of them – but there isn’t that much depth to any of them. They’re all right on the surface, but not more. Add a cliché-ish villain, an overly filled third act with expositions, & an unnecessary subplot that changed the focus away from the main story. Well what a “meh”. It even felt like the film didn’t want to achieve its goal – in this case; to save the world. But let’s take away the criticism for a minute. Will Smith is a gigantic plus, and the chemistry between most of the characters is natural and they’re really likable! Really! The humor though – isn’t that impressive. They tried, but never got my interest. ‘Suicide Squad’ is from my point of view a letdown – but it’s still not horrible.