Suicide Squad (2016) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

Tagline: Justice has a bad side.

It feels good to be bad... Assemble a team of the world's most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government's disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren't picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it's every man for himself?

Storyline: It feels good to be bad...Assemble a team of the world's most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government's disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren't picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it's every man for himself? Written by Amitash Balekar

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben, December 9, 2016 Warner Bros. and DC Comics have achieved something remarkable in 2016. They have released two big-budget films that racked up enviable box office numbers but are nevertheless considered disappointments, because they didn't do even better. The critical response was savage (to the extent anyone cares anymore), but more threatening to the companies' franchise hopes was the mixed response from comic fans. Following the disappointment that greeted 2013's Superman reboot, Man of Steel, Warner and DC have been seeking a "killer app" that would reset the DC Universe and launch it into the stratosphere. After Batman v Superman failed to achieve the desired lift, anticipation for Suicide Squad was extreme, fueled by a clever marketing campaign promising a lighter, more comedic tone and a bevy of characters new to the screen. The film that arrived in theaters last August was . . . something else. Just how to define that "something else" is a challenge, because Suicide Squad plays less like a movie than a corporate branding project assembled by committee. The only thing they left out was a decent story—and unlike Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad hasn't been patched by the added scenes in the newly released "extended cut".

After the cataclysmic events that concluded Batman v Superman, a steely-eyed covert operative named Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) dusts off a plan to organize a band of imprisoned supervillains as a counter-terrorist strike force. Waller's "Task Force X" is such a dubious notion that the U.S. military has previously rejected it, and it takes not one, but two meetings with top brass to sell it anew, thereby introducing a motif of repetitious exposition that is Suicide Squad's proxy for a plot. Waller finally seals the deal by having her captive witch, Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), steal Iran's atomic secrets—at which point you have to wonder why the generals don't grab Waller's resources to gather more intelligence in exchange for authorizing her program, but never mind.

Waller is as ruthless in exploiting her charges as Kevin Bacon's Nazi scientist in X-Men: First Class. She controls the Enchantress by keeping her heart in a box wired with explosives (or at least I think that's it; it's never fully explained). She controls the Special Forces commander she puts in charge of the squad, Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), by manipulating him into a love affair with archaeologist June Moone (also Delevingne), who is the piteous human host inhabited by Enchantress. And she has explosive charges planted in the necks of the remaining squad members, so that they can be executed by her or Flag the minute they step out of line. Besides the Enchantress, the squad includes two so-called "meta-humans"— Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and El Diablo (Jay Hernandez)—while the rest are regular humans with special talents: Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Slipknot (Adam Beach).

The film's nominal villain, against whom Waller sends her task force, is Incubus, the brother of Enchantress (Alain Chanoine, enhanced by CG), but the real villain is Waller herself, whose machinations are responsible for unleashing Incubus on the world. After selling Task Force X as a defense against the speculative threat of a malevolent version of Superman, she unwittingly (or is it?) allows Enchantress and her brother to invade Midway City. When the apparently invulnerable siblings begin raining down destruction, Waller seems less concerned with stopping them than with studying the crystalline super-soldiers into which they have transformed the helpless populace. Despite her claim to be protecting America, Waller doesn't seem to care about actual Americans; she casually executes them when it suits her purpose. Indeed, the job she initially assigns to Task Force X isn't stopping the attack by Incubus and Enchantress; it's extracting a Very Important Person from the midst of the carnage.

Effective fictional heroes are defined by the villains who oppose them, but in Suicide Squad the villains themselves remain ill-defined, because Suicide Squad routinely shortchanges its plot in favor of the task force's back stories. Ayer keeps looping back and restarting the narrative as he expands the squad and delves into its past. Deadshot and Harley Quinn are the star attractions; they're first introduced in their prison cells, followed by an account of their criminal history during Waller's initial presentation to the military. Periodic flashbacks add to both their biographies and, in Deadshot's case, his flickering desire for redemption. (Harley suffers from no such pangs of conscience, and her cheerfully unhinged behavior gives the film what little fizz it has.) Diablo's tragic history is reserved until late in the game, when Ayer stops the action for a tearful confession at a point where he should be picking up the pace. Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang receive little attention beyond Waller's initial rundown, but their treatment is positively generous compared to that of Slipknot, who is thrown into the group at the last minute with a one-sentence introduction. And then, just when you think you've gotten to know the players, Ayer tosses in another new face: an avenging samurai warrior, Katana (Karen Fukuhara), whose enchanted sword traps the souls of her victims—and who is utterly extraneous to the plot.

Then there's Jared Leto's Joker, a one-note performance that is a pale imitation of the character previously embodied by Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger. All of those actors brought a sense of menace to Batman's most famous adversary, whereas Leto brings only weirdness. While it makes sense to feature Joker in the back story of Harley Quinn, because she's his girlfriend, Ayer isn't content to leave him in the past. Instead, he sidetracks the squad's quest so that he can dwell on Joker's efforts to free Harley, even though the logic of the story requires those efforts to fail so that Harley can remain with her teammates for the final showdown with Incubus and Enchantress. Joker is one of the chief beneficiaries of the scenes added to the extended cut, but drawing out his role merely confirms what a drag he is on the narrative. It would have made more sense (and had greater impact) to have Joker emerge only at the very end, after the battle is won and Harley has been returned to her prison cell. If you're going to build a movie around lesser known DC characters, you should leave the famous ones on the periphery, as Ayer does with the Flash (Ezra Miller) and another familiar figure whose appearance is uncredited.

Suicide Squad concludes with the requisite orgy of special effects, and when the dust clears, Midway City has been as thoroughly wrecked as Metropolis in Man of Steel and Gotham in Batman v Superman, along with significant portions of America's defense capability. No wonder Waller is told, in the obligatory post-credit sequence providing a link to the next big DCU film, to shut down her project. To borrow a phrase from the Vietnam era, she destroyed the country in order to save it. But at least Deadshot gets to visit with his daughter, which, in the world of Suicide Squad, amounts to a happy ending.

As with Batman v Superman, I am under no illusion that yet another review of Suicide Squad will in any way alter the opinions of either fans or detractors. Both should be forewarned that the ten minutes of added scenes in the extended cut do not significantly alter the plot or fill in any gaps. For those who enjoyed the movie, the additional character beats will probably be entertaining; for those who didn't, they'll just slow it down. Warner's presentation is technically proficient, and fans should enjoy it.

[CSW] -2.8- There seems to be a problem brewing with DC films, and I'm not sure why WB can't see it. I think this "darker tone" they're going for is sabotaging any chance they have to compete with Marvel. With that said, this reviewer summed it up better than I could:
Suicide Squad is fun. Unfortunately, it's not as fun as the trailer made it out to be. This movie succeeds when it comes to creating the stylized look and feel of a comic book, but the frantic pacing and the flimsy plot fall a bit short on the screen. Nevertheless, Margot Robbie does a great job as Harley Quinn and Will Smith is effective as Deadshot. Leto's Joker, though, feels like a missed opportunity. I was entertained by this film - it's just not the game changer I hoped it would be.

[V4.5-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box


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