Suicide Squad
If film reviews could be written in one short sentence, then my review for Suicide Squad would be thus: A beautiful mess.
The emphasis would be on beautiful, as I just don’t understand the slew of negative reviews pouring out of the States. Suicide Squad is a fun and highly entertaining film, albeit one that doesn’t always make sense. Not that making sense ever prevented people from love the countless Marvel films.
Suicide Squad follows a shadowy government operative who has captured a host of bad guys with a range of super powers. Well, mostly just highly evolved skill sets, but a few unearthly powers thrown in for good measure. I mean we have Jai Courtney’s Boomerang whose super powers revolve around being able to drink beer from a can in the middle of a firefight, and throwing a boomerang. Go figure, the world’s first Aussie super anti-hero. But these bad guys have been formed into a team in a similar manner to The Dirty Dozen and have to go off and fight the bad guys, who in this instance are a couple of ancient witches.
Bad dudes fighting bad dudes.
Suicide Squad sort of stumbles through it’s two hour three minute run time like an inebriated trying to walk a straight line – it eventually gets to where it’s going, is fun to look at, but is a bit of a letdown at the end. The beginning of the film feels like a series of music videos as we are introduced to all the main characters, which is cool on one hand because the music chosen is spot on, but at the same time is disjointed and does nothing for the overall narrative.
When the Dirty Dozen are finally set loose, and the action kicks in, it almost feels like a little too much, until Will Smith’s Deadshot takes center stage and we start to see the strength in the casting. Whilst both Will Smith and Margot Robbie are the stand out stars, the rest of the crew work well with them to deliver an explosive action film with the necessary humour to keep things light and enjoyable.
The highlight of Suicide Squad has to be Margot Robbie’s beautifully demented Harley Quinn, who steals the show in most of her scenes. The biggest disappointment is Jared Leto’s The Joker, whose laugh just made me cringe every time he deemed to necessary to announce his arrival on screen.
All up though Suicide Squad is a wild if bumpy ride that is a blast and certainly worth multiple viewings.
Rating: M Violence and offensive language.
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