Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad had the right pedigree to be a great movie. Warner Bros put together an all-star team headlined by Will Smith and Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) and handed the director’s chair to David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury). Somewhere behind the scenes, it turns out, production fell into shambles. Warner Bros. executives overwhelmed the creative team with suffocating pressure after the critical failure of Batman v. Superman.  Their hand-wringing caused them to make a flurry of bad decisions.

Swirling rumors of competing final cuts of the movie and an anxious, high pressure production began to surface and Suicide Squad was released to a swelling chorus of critical boos. Critics condemned the movie as a loud, badly edited mess. They have a point, but in the end, it was good enough. It just takes a while to get to the good bits.

The opening 15-30 minutes of the movie are among the worst in 21st century filmmaking. Supposedly, Warner Bros execs noticed how much we liked their movie trailers with 70s pop songs, neon blinking lights and a crazy animation overlay, so they hired the company who made that ad campaign to edit the film. In doing so, they snatched creative control from the fingers of director David Ayer.

Just like the trailer, the movie cycles through the bios of each character--one after another, painstakingly describing their assets. These vignettes are juxtaposed against a serious conversation with Viola Davis’s character, Amanda Waller. The movie is played straight, but these little animatics pop up every few minutes in the first hour. It’s schizophrenic.

I found myself re-editing the film in my head (As I’m sure Ayer did when he saw an advertising agency peel apart his movie and piece it back together in a way that appeals more to goldfish than it does to people). I could see where pieces were supposed to fit because it had all the parts needed to make a really good action movie. Instead, the movie treats us like idiots in the opening act. Then it doesn’t matter. The rest of the film coalesces into one long solid action scene. After badly edited introductions of the characters, the movie works.

The characters, as presented, have only basic motivations--one important need/want--and nothing else is explored. Will Smith is charming as our lovable rogue and serves a lynchpin for the characters and cast. Despite the marketing campaign’s attempt to generate buzz around Harley and the Joker, Deadshot is the A-lister

Speaking of the Joker, Suicide Squad fails miserably at one of the most important aspects of the Joker. He’s not funny. He doesn’t tell one joke. He doesn’t even try to be funny. He doesn’t do anything that even he finds funny. It would be inexcusable if Joker were a main player in the film’s plot. However, he’s only shown to flesh out Harley Quinn’s story. She’s a player in Suicide Squad, Joker is just part of her motivation. Despite the writers’ shortcomings with Joker, Harley and Joker’s complicated, unhealthy, demented relationship is fascinating to see.

Viola Davis is perfectly cast as the borderline evil Amanda Waller and Joel Kinneman is a fine straight man. The rest of the cast has to share the rest of the short stick. They don’t have a lot to do when they’re being showed up by Harley Quinn and Deadshot, but Jai Courtney manages to make a lasting impression as Captain Boomerang, the bumbling, drunken Flash villain who just wants to go home and drink some beer with his stuffed unicorn.

In the past few years, Warner Bros has shown the world just how easily they can ruin good ideas. However, for all their interference in in the production of Suicide Squad, they couldn’t squash the charming performances of the villainous heroes. It’s serviceable entertainment that leaves us in a good spot for a sequel. If they bring back the remaining cast (not all of them make it...it is called Suicide Squad for a reason), they’ll bring me back too.