Warner
Brothers and DC continue to chase the dragon that is the Marvel
Cinematic Universe with Suicide Squad, and they continue to make
weird creative and tonal decisions that continuously hamstring that
effort.
It
made me think a lot of thoughts, so buckle up, this is going to be a
long one.
Task
Force X, more commonly referred to as the Suicide Squad, dates back
to a couple issues of The Brave and the Bold in 1959 where it was a
government agency formed when the Justice Society disappeared for a
while. They were mostly military people and disappeared into
retirement/obscurity after a while.
The second, more popular,
critically acclaimed version that this movie is largely based on,
dates back to 1987, where a government official rounds up a bunch of
hardened criminals with super powers or advanced technology, and
sends them across the world to do government wetwork where they
either succeed or get themselves killed. Either way, its a win-win
for Uncle Sam. But not THE Uncle Sam, who actually is a character in
the DC Universe.
Told you so.
There's also a modern version of the team similar
to the 80s-90s version, but this time with a little less inter-team
backstabbing and with Harley Quinn attached because its a new
continuity and they needed a popular character to add to it because
that's what temporarily sells comic books.
What
this means is that in one form or another, the Suicide Squad has
existed in three different major DC comics continuities (Pre-Crisis,
New Earth, and New 52). This is also why explaining comic books to
normies is both frustrating and time consuming.
So
before we get into it, here's the Spoiler-free Review: Suicide Squad
is the most entertaining movie of the DC Cinematic Universe, but its
still not very good and continues to be frustrating in how close it
can get to getting it right and how painfully often it misses the
mark. 5/10.
Anyway,
the movie version is assembled much like the 80s team. Amanda Waller
(Viola Davis) proposes a disposable black ops team made up of
hardened super criminals in the wake of Superman's bland death in
Batman v Superman: Dawn
of Justice
so that the government has some way to check the next Superman who
shows up and isn't interested in Truth, Justice, and the culturally
sensitive way.
Oh
yeah. Spoilers for Batman
v Superman.
Waller
is pretty spot on for what the comic version is all about and is
herself a bad, bad lady when she needs to be. She recruits decorated
war hero golden boy Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) to serve as field
commander and babysitter for her team. She does this by setting him
up with an archeologist named June Moon (Cara Delevingne) who is
possessed by an ancient entity called the Enchantress who is
obviously magical but they persist in calling it extradimensional.
Waller has the Enchantress' heart in a suitcase that she can stab
voodoo-doll style if the freaky witch lady starts getting out of
line.
The
rest of the team consists of Deadshot (Will Smith), a world-class
assassin and marksman; Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the Joker's
girlfriend and equal in lunacy; Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an
Australian crook who uses trick boomerangs and fought the Flash;
Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a former gangbanger with deadly pyrokinetic
abilities and a desire for redemption; Killer Croc (Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje) the Batman villain who looks like a crocodile;
Slipknot (Adam Beach), a jobber from Firestorm's old series who's
good at climbing things. Oh, and they're also joined by Katana (Karen
Fukuhara) who isn't a villain at all, but she does have a magical
sword that captures the souls of the people killed with it. To their
credit, they don't even bother trying to explain that one away as
being extradimensional vaguely advanced science. She's a left field
pick, but its fine, and it has me crossing my fingers that they
actually go and make a Batman and the Outsiders movie. Because I'm
the lunatic who wants to see them pull off live action Metamorpho and
Geo-Force.
GEO-FORCE!
Anyway....
We're introduced to most of the team through flashbacks as to how they got arrested, usually through Batman and in Boomer's case, the Flash in a brief cameo.
While
the team is being assembled, Enchantress goes off the reservation and
frees her brother, Incubus, only instead of meeting him in outer
space, they meet up in a subway. She goes rogue, Waller tries and
fails to kill her, Incubus powers her up and gives her a cleaner
costume, and the two proceed to build a gigantic glowing bomb that
may or may not be a light grenade for vaguely defined reasons. But
its definitely a threat. Because Waller says so.
The
squad mounts up and chafes under Flag's gung-ho leadership and they
fight their way through a city crawling with relatively easily killed
minions and yadda yadda yadda, the villains end up bonding with each
other and who's the real monster blah blah blah and it literally ends
like Ghostbusters.
No,
not this year's biggest movie trainwreck. I mean the original
Ghostbusters.
The
plot is derivative as hell and the only reason it isn't linear is
because its broken up by numerous flashbacks. The editing is also
really weird and reeks of executive meddling, since there are
introductions, then introductions again, then recaps of things that
happened half an hour ago, and other messes like that.
The
meat of the movie is a ensemble character piece as these weirdos are
thrust into an increasingly bizarre adventure. A lot happens, but the
actual plot is surprisingly simple. Curiously for a character piece,
the three top billed characters are the ones I had the most problems
with.
Deadshot.
So Floyd Lawton comes from a well-to-do but messed up family and his
killing days started early. He tried to challenge Batman with a
tuxedo and mask, got arrested, developed a nihilistic “death wish”
which was him mostly not caring about whether he lived or died and
eventually found out he had a daughter which gave him some semblance
of something to live for. Death wish, sleazy white trash moustache,
selfish prick, sarcasm, eventual discovery of a daughter that gave
him something to live for. These are Deadshot's biggest character
traits, and the movie only bothers with the last two. He only ever
wears his iconic mask twice, which I understand. You pay for Will
Smith, you damn well better use all of Will Smith. Its the lack of a
death wish that really makes him generic anti-hero here. The whole
appeal of Deadshot is to see him be enormously casual about the
deaths of his teammates and about the danger around him, which
ironically enough, makes him the perfect member of the Squad because
all he cares about is himself and shooting people that annoy him.
Harley
Quinn. Personal taste is personal taste, but I prefer the harlequin
version from the Animated Series to the modern Suicide Girls camwhore
version, mostly because I prefer minimalist designs. Character-wise,
this Harley is cheerful, bubbly, and thoroughly psychotic, which is
in keeping with the character, but she also lacks an innocence that
detracts subtlety from the character. This isn't a knock on her performance, that's fine. My beef is with the writing.
Part of the bizarre appeal of
Harley is her innocence. When she's happy, its a childlike joy. When
she's angry, its a tantrum, albeit a deadly one that usually involves
hyenas tearing someone apart. She taps into a trickster archetype, a
prankster. Making her a sexpot doesn't work for me because it means
the Joker regressed her to a teenager instead of a pre-adolescent,
which is less horrifying. And let's not bandy about here, the Joker
taking an intelligent psychologist and manipulating her into loving
him and then fracturing her personality into a thousand broken pieces
is HORRIFYING. That's the point.
Joker.
I haven't mentioned Jared Leto's Joker for a couple of reasons.
First, he has absolutely no bearing on the plot. Whatsoever. You
could cut every one of his scenes and it would work out exactly the
same. Second, its the arguably the worst on-screen portrayal of the
Joker, and definitely the worst live-action one. The Joker's entire
existence serves as a mockery. A mockery of sanity, good taste,
morality, style, taste, whatever you can think of, the Joker exists
to deliberately subvert it. The argument can be made that this
version's a mockery of modern day gangsters and their aspirations of
opulence. My counter-argument is that its simply not funny in its
execution. They get the off-putting weirdness of the Joker down on
screen, but they miss the point that he's the Clown Prince of Crime.
Much of Joker's atrocities are committed because he thinks they're
funny. He's even go so far as to let people live because killing them
wouldn't be funny. Its also why his history is littered with
outlandish gag weapons and deathtraps. Its because he finds his brand
of nihilistic absurdity hilarious, and when the writers are good, we
too find it hilarious, which is the greatest element of the horror
that is the Joker. We can identify with the Joker's sense of humor,
which in turn repulses us, because there's that little bit of the
Joker inside us all. Much like Lex Luthor in Batman V Superman,
the misinterpretation of such an archetypal character as the Joker is
downright tragic.
Now,
as to the portrayal of Joker & Harley's relationship. The Joker
is the primary mover and his erratic, often dangerous treatment of
Harley is also part of his villainy. He created her on a whim, and
just as often, casts her aside for those same reasons. HOWEVER, on
the flipside, Harley is a monster of his creation and is
psychotically devoted to him, in a “if I can't have him, no one
can” sort of way, which is also comical because its a kind of
karmic retribution for ol' Puddin'. Its a relationship built out of
two horrible people who are always on the verge of killing each
other. Its anything but healthy, but the abuse runs both ways.
Enchantress.
Oddly enough, June Moon is fairly close to her comic counterpart,
where she is wildly powerful but wildly dangerous. The problem is
that she's also the primary antagonist so she has nothing to do with
the rest of the team and does little besides sneer, move around
creepily, and give Rick Flag something to angst about. Also, I do
miss the green witch's hat.
Rick
Flag. He starts out as a standard military action movie guy, then he
gets involved with Enchantress, then he turns into the team's wet
blanket, and then he gets a little more interesting, but not much. He
has to play the straight shooter compared to all the villains, but he
mostly gets lost in the crowd, and even his “rivalry” with
Deadshot feels hollow.
So
with all the legitimate complaints about the movie, there are some
real bright spots that stand out, even if they're underutilized.
Killer
Croc's a lot of fun as dumb muscle comic relief. He buddies up with
Diablo, but aside from a few moments where he rips and tears or
tosses off an occasional one-liner, he doesn't really do anything.
Which is a shame, since the makeup work on him is fantastic.
Captain
Boomerang steals every scene he's in because, like the comics, he's a
complete and total shitbag. Drunk, filthy, womanizing, cowardly,
backstabbing, and yet a survivor who, in the comics at least, is
capable of giving the Flash a legitimate fight because he's such a
tricky bastard. The scene where he dupes Slipknot into making a break
for it only for the bomb to go off is lifted from the comics (except
in the books, Slipknot lost an arm, not his head, so he could come
back later and job some more).
The part where Flag smashes the
detonator and sets the Squad free because he's mopey about
Enchantress is perfectly punctuated by Boomer grabbing his beer and
bolting from the bar they're in. Of course its ruined by him showing
up again outside when they all march off to the final action sequence
for no reason that makes any sense outside of a shoehorned attempt to
make these villains into “A FAMILY.” It would've been more in
character if Boomer actually did run off only to get dragged back
after the final battle's over. But whatever, I'm a big Flash fan,
and seeing them otherwise get Captain Freakin' Boomerang done right
on the big screen gives me some hope for the Flash movie. Not a lot,
but some.
The
real standout of the movie, and the character who legitimately gives
it heart and soul is Diablo. He's soulful, mournful, and his
self-imposed pacifism and hopeless quest for redemption is the actual
beating heart of this movie. Sure, his arc's predictable like most of
the rest of the movie, but its also the best executed and genuinely
more compelling than Deadshot learning how to be an antihero or
Harley being an awful person and getting away with it because “WE'RE
A FAMILY NOW!”
Top-to-bottom,
this is a deeply flawed movie with a lot of bad narrative decisions,
but there's also some flashes of gold in there that make it the best
entry in the DC Cinematic Universe. Its just a shame that “The best
entry” in this case is a mediocre 5/10. Not recommended, unless you
like C- and D-listers like I do.
