Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'Suicide Squad'

Written by Mike Cervantes

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

Oh, uh, um……hey, um……uh…wow. 
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So, here’s the thing. Suicide Squad, judged completely on its own merits, is a decent, interesting, and completely fun flick. You can sit in the theater, hug your popcorn and grotesquely large soft drink, and have a good little time with it. In the sense that it can fulfill the need of the casual movie goer it works perfectly. However, when you consider the lengths it took for this project to get off the ground, the amount of promotion it was given, and the role it is intended to play, as another film in DC’s attempts to build a film continuity around the topsy-turvy concepts presented by Zack Snyder, then what you’re left with is a film that’s an even hotter mess than the pre-revamp Harley Quinn. 

Am I getting ahead of myself? Yeah, that might be too easy a thing to do with this picture. 

The most interesting thing about this movie is that we seem to actually know what happened with the film, all through its production. It began as a script written by David Ayer in 2009, and was fought for vehemently by the screenwriter, citing that DC comics’ supervillain super-group had enough notoriety thanks to their occasional appearance on The CW’s Arrow TV series. Information on casting, and production was abounding, almost as though the movie was promulgated by the internet itself. Finally, as production wrapped Batman v. Superman hit theaters, and the cast returned to re-shoot a dozen scenes because, supposedly, a film starring a mass of supervillains needed its tone to be lightened against the outright bleakness of a film starring two of DC’s biggest superheroes. 

This can’t be emphasized enough, mostly due to the chintzy way Suicide Squad attempts to prove it is a universe film. Government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) walks down the street and side-glances at a man selling post-mortem Superman t-shirts. It’s almost as if that was added in post! There’s also a scene involving Captain Boomerang,  that…hell, you’ve probably read about it already on the internet. 

Ultimately that’s what is most problematic about Suicide Squad: it’s a movie that needs to be a superhero/continuity movie when it doesn’t really have to be. Ayer’s early descriptions of the film suggest it to be a “Dirty Dozen with supervillains.” Only, since we’re a mere three films into this supposed Snyder-verse, the only established villains so far have been General Zod, who has since died…twice, Lex Luthor, who is in jail, and The Joker who’s…Oh, wait, he’s actually here, played by Jared Leto, baring no resemblance to, or really, even showing the same level of menace as he did in Nolan’s The Dark Knight, so whoop-dee. 

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So in terms of charismatic villainy, they’re really going to have to reach for this one, and the movie invites the audience to reach along with them. Will Smith is in the full protagonist role as Deadshot, a no-miss gun for hire who is all business, and haunted by the one moment he was begged by his civilian daughter not to take the shot, against Batman. Then there’s Margot Robbie, debuting as all-time favorite DC supervillain Harley Quinn. She’s insane, because she always tells people that she’s insane, all the time. She manages to match the skills of a no-miss hitman using only a Vegas-decorated revolver and a baseball bat, so you know she’s badass. But she’s only biding her time until she gets rescued by her puddin’, and her superpower seems to be the ability to get away with absolutely everything, with everyone. The third most prolific role belongs to Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, an ex-gang-banger who possesses, “The gift of the devil,” which means he can control fire, though his abilities have a pretty spectacular payoff in the third act, at least worth the price of admission. The rest of the team is rounded out by Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and Katana (Karan Fukuhara), who have about as much character development as I have just suggested. Oh, but there a mention of Katana’s sword stealing the souls of the dead, and at one point Captain Boomerang convinces Adam Beach’s Slipknot to escape, leading to an explosion that proves Amanda Waller is, gasp, actually serious about her intentions.
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But within Waller’s conviction lies the hammer that completely shatters the narrative of this film. It comes as no surprise, as this is a Snyder-verse movie, that Waller is responsible for the event that led her to form this villainous team in the first place. That is, she attempted to control the deity Enchantress (Cara Delevigne) by both sealing her heart inside a box containing a time-bomb, and having her military liaison, Col. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) fall for the human body she possessed. Enchantress unsurprisingly breaks loose and goes full Gozer on a building in the center of the city, thus giving the Suicide Squad their first task of destroying the demonic entity that wouldn’t have been unleashed if Waller wasn’t so gung-ho about blackmailing villains to do black-ops. Waller is completely unapologetic about this, as she even has the team take a detour to rescue her from her own war room, and still commits the squad to their sentence, despite her entire plan being a complete wash and her own fault. 

It’s aggravating that the Snyder-verse is so completely committed to taking what are supposed to be DC Comics’ most powerful humans (and alien) and brilliant tacticians: Superman, Lex Luthor, Batman, and yes, Amanda Waller, and making them the people responsible for the most collateral damage this series of movies has ever seen. Ultimately, it becomes easy to root for the Suicide Squad, because as bad a bunch of criminals as they possibly are, they can’t possibly be as destructive as the good guys. 

The most frustrating thing about Suicide Squad is that the entirety of the time you watch it, you wonder, what if? What if this was actually allowed to be a gritty movie about super powered criminals? What if this movie was really allowed to be gritty and tragic, instead of nice compared to Zack Snyder’s most recent beginning of summer brand angst-and-punch? What if we had a truly menacing Joker or a fully fleshed-out Harley Quinn, and what if those characters could serve as a contrast to the fully-formed Justice League, which won’t even exist in the Snyder-verse for a whole other year. Suicide Squad will serve its purpose. It will make us believe in such a thing as a DC comics film continuity. The problem that still exists amongst us fans, however, is that the stories still feel like they’re in the wrong box order. 

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