I didn’t see Suicide Squad when it came out because I was knee deep in nappies and then the reviews were awful. When it recently arrived on Netflix I thought how bad could it possibly be… I mean maybe it will be fun…
Anyway so Viola Davis plays Amanda Walker, the head of a shady government organisation that wants to build a squad of “meta humans” to help deal with potential super human threats. She figures the best approach is to round-up some desperate criminals who are locked up and offer them reduced sentences for their help.
As they are not very nice people, they are not wildly cooperative or trustworthy. Under threat of having their heads blown off they agree to assist under the command of Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman).
It’s not long before just the kind of threat Amanda was worried about surfaces. Enchantress (Cara Delevigne) who is possessing Rick’s girlfriend, June has decided to wipe out humanity with the assistance of her brother and an army of people with bubbly heads. Will the Suicide Squad band together to stop the witch or will they cut and run at the first opportunity?
Unfortunately Suicide Squad suffers from DC-itis. If you need to hire a double decker bus to transport your characters to breakfast, you have too many characters. Also if your villain’s motivation for destroying humanity, is just because it seems like the kind of thing a villain would do… you can do better. And if you sell your film on a specific character *cough” The Joker (Jared Leto) *cough* then that character should probably appear in the film for more than five minutes and not be absolutely shit.
The biggest problem with Suicide Squad is that the middle act is boring. With so many characters it gives itself too much to do and the result is bloat with no reward. It is hard to care about any of the characters or to understand their motivations. Will Smith (as Deadshot) and Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn) give decent performances but everyone else is forgettable. It probably would have been much more successful to just do a Deadshot film or a Harley Quinn/Joker film. There were so many characters I wasn’t even sure what all of their abilities were. I mean are Captain Boomerang’s (Jai Courtenay) only special skills really just throwing a boomerang and being a bogan? Why did they even need him? Come to think of it, why did they need Harley Quinn – are insanity and gymnastics that sought after? If Diablo (Jay Hernandez) wasn’t such a misery he probably could have done the whole job himself.
Anyway, I am rambling. I was bored. This was boring. Don’t bother.
2/5
abbiosbiston 
I gave this a miss too. I might watch it on TV, on a rainy day, with nothing else to do. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
I think you will be as bored as I was Pete. Make sure you have snacks and something to distract yourself with.
It was an absolute drag for me too. A complete misfire.
I think it was a case of just too many things going on at once.. all of them boring.
I know I watched this movie but I honestly don’t remember a single thing about it.
Because there wasn’t a single memorable thing about it.
I find this problem a lot with action films. . . too much action and not enough time to get to know or care about the characters. I’m so sick of super hero movies and DC comics. I was never a big fan, but the first Guardians of the Galaxy and first Iron Man are the only two I liked.
I think they forget that emotional connection is what makes people remember films. It’s not just explosions. I am not a big superhero fan either but they just keep making more of them!
The main problem with this film is that it was edited by the same people who edited the trailer and they are two entirely different disciplines. You can get away with messing about with the continuity in a trailer but not in a film like this which needs a linear narrative.
Plus, what bothered me most was how they set up the Suicide Squad to prevent a super villain attack – and low and behold there is one! Why not wait until the villain strikes THEN be forced to form the group? >.<
It was all over the shop. Just a mess really.