Suicide Squad (Movie Review)

 ***This review will contain spoilers***

Summary:

Figuring they're all expendable, a U.S. intelligence officer decides to assemble a team of dangerous, incarcerated Supervillains for a top-secret mission. Now armed with government weapons, Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc and other despicable inmates must learn to work together. Dubbed Task Force X, the criminals unite to battle a mysterious and powerful entity, while diabolical Joker launches his evil agenda of his own. 

I'm not a fan of the intro to this movie. It was close to twenty minutes and that is just too long. I love Viola Davis and she is a fantastic choice to play Amanda Waller, however, the movie should have started with her since her plan to control these villains is the entirety of the plot. it felt redundant starting the movie with a montage of Dead and Harley Quinn to then have another montage of them when Waller was going over the team members in detail. What made it obvious that those two would be the frontrunners of the movie was that their montages were three times as long as their other villain teammates. 

In the Pentagon meeting, when discussing 'contingency plans' why is fluoride in the water being insinuated as bad if the government keep's saying it's good for us? We all know the government hides things but do the writers know something we don't?   

This movie should have been a slam dunk if it was done correctly. The structure of the movie felt too choppy, it's obvious that they were trying to add too much in a two hour movie. I miss the era of movies that adapted the less is more method. And when doing a simple search on this movie you can find information on how there were reshoots done that cost even more. I wonder what the original idea/script was because the final result left a lot to be desired. I'm actually curious how many scenes were cut out and, essentially, left on the editing floor.

It was clear that Deadshot, Harley and Joker were the front centre of this movie and had the most flashbacks which there were a lot more characters that deserved more screen time. Katana, Enchantress, Diablo and even Killer Croc would have been just as interesting if not even more to have flashbacks on. Granted some of them don't have the same origin stories as in the comics but if you are going to change things for the big screen the least they could have done was show us more!!! What a wasted opportunity. 

The story of Harley Quinn and the Joker has been told so many times from movies, tv shows and even games it's such an overdone story, however, they could have cut down on the Joker scenes and made a separate movie of the two lovebirds if they were that gung ho about making it. Granted, Jared Leto's rendition of the Joker is so god damn awful but Margot Robbie's performance is so spot on that it makes up for that horror. I do like that this Joker seems to be more attached to Harley and does whatever he can to rescue and break her out of her prison. 

For a two hour movie, it took almost the halfway point to actually get into any sort of action scene. I honestly felt like this movie dragged on and just too long to 'explain' and go over the characters backgrounds. I love flashbacks but man they were not done properly in this movie. I will say that the later half of the movie definitely made up for the first half. I loved seeing these characters working together and fighting against Enchantress. Seeing Diablo all decked out in his 'fire god' form was so cool and demonstrated just how powerful he was. For an all powerful Witch, Enchantress was defeated a little too quickly for my liking but I guess the film cost too much to put anymore money in the final battle. 

Rating:

Overall, it's not the best movie but not the worst I've seen either. That's why I'm giving it 3 stars on 5. The ending definitely made up for the first half of this atrocity. But I did like finally having some of these characters on the big screen. There was continuity between this movie and Batman V Superman movie which is nice but man this DCEU just blows in comparison to the animated movies.