You know those people who feel the need to tell everyone that they’re “weird” or have a twisted sense of humor or are a geek from way back? These three things don’t necessarily have anything in common, but I’ve certainly heard many people over the years tell me something about themselves that isn’t self-evident from simply spending time with them. It’s a classic case of telling and not showing, and in all likelihood, if someone feels compelled to talk about a personality trait they possess, they probably don’t possess it. So how does this relate to DC Comics’ latest entry into the feature-film world, SUICIDE SQUAD? There are a whole lot of folks in this movie telling me how bad they are without any real proof of stated villainy.
Here’s another, more to-the-point question: when did we stop letting our bad guys be bad guys? Nearly every member of this team of criminals has a backstory that makes their bad behavior seem inevitable and sympathetic rather than just the product of a twisted mind. Twisted minds can be fun too. And not all bad guys need to have the end of the world as their ultimate goal. Usually, it’s the more intimate, personal horror stories that are the most tragic. For that reason, The Joker (Jared Leto) is by far the most interesting and boundlessly scary thing in SUICIDE SQUAD, and he’s not even a part of the team, nor is he the adversary the team is trying to take down. He’s familiar window dressing, but Leto has injected Joker with such a corrupt soul that you can’t wait to see what he does next.
Let me back this up a bit. As you likely know, SUICIDE SQUAD is about the U.S. government, through intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), forcibly recruiting a group of hardened criminals (some of whom have powers or are otherwise enhanced in some way) to take on missions that are too dangerous and sometimes morally compromised. Waller is a genuine, menacing badass, and it becomes clear by the end of the film that she is the most terrifying and threatening person in this movie. She uses military expert Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) to wrangle these villains, all of whom are incarcerated, including assassin Deadshot (Will Smith, really distinguishing himself in a rare ensemble appearance), the part animal Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Slipknot (Adam Beach), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), firebug Diablo (Jay Hernandez), and Joker’s longtime companion, crazy Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie).
To watch his back, Flag has the sword-wielding Katana (Karen Fukuhara) and the wildcard witch Enchantress (Cara Delavingne), who is being controlled by the government initially and whose human alter-ego is sleeping with Flag. After a great deal of posturing, resistance and promises made about reducing their sentences, the bad guys finally fall in line. It appears for the sake of this film that writer-director David Ayer (who helmed FURY and END OF WATCH, wrote TRAINING DAY, and co-wrote the original THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS) that Waller is more recruiting these baddies to be the first line of defense against future attacks by other super-powered individuals (someone makes a speech at the beginning of the film about the possible scenario of the now-late Superman bursting onto the scene by tearing the roof off the White House) and not so much the part about doing horrible things the government can’t.
As I stated earlier, the biggest element missing from SUICIDE SQUAD are unapologetic bad guys. Nearly the entire team—good and bad—has a sob story past. Deadshot just wants to raise his young daughter; Boomerang just wants to get drunk and have sex; Enchantress is possessed against her will; Croc is simply a misunderstood man-lizard; Kitana’s husband was murdered and his soul is trapped in her sword; and even Harley Quinn was tricked by the Joker into falling in love with him when she was his jailhouse therapist in Arkham Asylum. Perhaps the one story I found compelling was Diablo’s. He was a loving and heavily tattooed husband and father who discovered he could start and control fire, got too emotional, and (literally) blew up in his home, with tragic consequences. When we meet him, he’s sworn off using his power against another person ever again, so he becomes a bomb we’re waiting to go off through the whole film.
SUICIDE SQUAD is a movie with a boatload of exposition and action sequences that feel stale and lacking in energy or originality. And don’t even get me started on who the ultimate “hidden” villain is here and how they manifest themselves and the nature of their threat to the world. It’s just plain silly and conventional. The action sequences stand in such stark contrast to Joker and Harley’s flashback adventures together that I almost wish this had been a film just about them and their twisted relationship. I also actually really liked Deadshot as a character; I just got really tired of Ayer attempting to soften his villainy by transforming him into the film’s primary antihero. Let me loathe these team members; it’s okay, I’ll still want to see them in a movie, just not this movie.
Although I’m a firm believer that a film’s rating doesn’t really change whether it’s scary, funny or enjoyable in any way, a big step into making these characters appropriately nasty would have been to let them cut loose in an R-rated adventure. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if an R-rated/unrated version of SUICIDE SQUAD is released on home video in a few months.
Back to Robbie for a moment, as good as she is in her scenes with Joker or even the few scenes of her alone just being nutso, she doesn’t really shine when she’s thrown in with the other SUICIDE SQUAD members, and believe me, they need all the help they can get being interesting. But a flashback sequence with her and Joker fighting off a pesky Batman while they’re on a rampage/date is more like what the film needed in terms of action sequences mixed with demented bad guys. The limited presence of Batman/Bruce Wayne is a critical part of Suicide Squad, despite him barely being in it, not unlike the Joker.
SUICIDE SQUAD feels stuffed to the gills, ripped apart and pieced back together in the editing room, and with a few notable exceptions, shockingly run of the mill. For a work that clearly set out to break a few rules in the superhero/villain playbook, it falls right in line by the time the final battle sequence begins and never comes back from that downturn. There are a couple of these characters that I’d love to see in other DC universe films, but only if someone in charge finds a way to incorporate them into a story that doesn’t feel like a cut-and-paste job. Fingers crossed for WONDER WOMAN.
