Shoddy storytelling from a master story-teller
Written and Directed by: David Ayer
Cast: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jared Leto
Swift shot: David Ayer is the savant who gave us Training Day and End of Watch, with rich and disturbing characters that gave me a guttural reaction the first time I saw them. Now, he has taken super-villains and wastes their stories in a melee of gun fights and swirling trash that just didn’t live up the hype. Oh sure, it wasn’t as bad as others would have you believe, but it fell short of Ayer’s storytelling might.
Suicide Squad is ultimately a Deadshot and Harley Quinn story with some other bad-guys haphazardly tossed into the mix. This is not a Joker film, so let’s just clear that illusion right away. In fact, let’s not even mention much about the Joker, other than his laugh sounded an awful lot like a certain sloth’s from Zootopia. Yes, Leto is an incredible actor, no you don’t really get to see much of that on display in Suicide Squad. Also, he was entirely unfunny – a crime for any Joker portrayal, quite frankly.
So, very little Joker, very little Leto and Robbie screen time – which is a real shame, because they did have a decent lethal alchemy together.
Amanda Waller (David) is a real bitch. She’s a government agent who is in the habit of getting people to serve the government against their will. The recent events in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Jusitce have made her realize the next war won’t be fought with soldiers, it’ll be fought with metahumans. And she alludes to the fact that America isn’t the only nation keenly aware of this new opportunity.
So, Waller decides to pitch her “Task Force X” plan to the higher-ups, a gambit that they’ll see the win-win benefits of using disposable killers to do the government’s bidding. In the Intel community they are sometimes referred to as Kleenex, due to their disposable nature. Think Dirty Dozen meets The Raid, and you get an idea of what she has in mind. On paper, and in practice, it is a really colossally bad idea!
When Waller shows the powers that be what one special metahuman, Dr. June Moone (Cara Delevingne) can do once transformed into the ancient witch, Enchantress, they are immediately on board. The scene is satirical but also trite. That isn’t how it works, that isn’t how any of this works.
I kept thinking that a lot during Suicide Squad. I get that they needed to move the action forward though, so I let it slide. Even for a great writer like Ayer, I can forgive gaps to promote momentum. So, I did, but only because I was looking forward to the rich character development on the horizon. It never came.
All the characters were mashed in between poorly edited transitions. Speaking of transitions, the film was inundated with “and then” rather than “but” flips of the proverbial page. Marvel gets this and owns it, but with these DC films, I feel like everything is just a spoon fed trip on one of those carnival rides that just takes you around. I want a roller-coaster of a story, especially from David Fucking Ayer! Training Day would be hard for anyone to surpass, I understand that, but here Ayer had all these murderers, rapists, cannibals, arsonists, and God knows what else, and they were never in a definitive state of chaos! I mean, shit, these people would not function as a cohesive unit. And, other than a few first steps into the fray, I never felt any real tension or chaos. Chaos is paramount in these types of films. But it all felt like a manufactured reality that just left me less than amazed.
A lot of potential wasted there.
[Swift aside: the problem, I think, actually stems from Ayer’s work ethic of team-building prior to shooting, where he puts the actors through some of the most intensive workouts and combat action drills Hollywood has ever seen. Which, normally is commendable, but in a film like this, where these individuals (yes, as a military man, Ayer will understand that jab) are supposed to be working together to one end, an end they don’t grasp, for people they don’t like, to pull together in such a quick fashion, is wholly unbelievable.]
Thankfully it wasn’t a complete shit show, there were some moments that got my attention. But five seconds later I wasn’t really invested in it anymore. Also, the running Harley Quinn joke got old a lot faster than I was expecting. Kudos to Robbie for her physical work though, especially one fight scene in an elevator that puts Chris Evans to shame!
With any team story, you run the risk of diluting many of the characters into duds, and when even the Joker comes across as dull, it’s inexcusable. You need to be invested in the characters, to care about them, and focusing on Deadshot (and shoehorning in some weird out of nowhere devotion to duty) just didn’t fly with me. There was supposed to be this obvious tearing apart for Deadshot who is essentially a junkie whose drug is killing, but Smith made him worship at the altar of the purse. He never showed me he was a bloodthirsty killer who had to struggle with his joy of killing over his devotion to being a dad or some shit.
Also lost on me was the fact that all these bad guys weren’t actually evil, they were just bad. Well, that’s a great message Ayer, but it made for a damned boring story. I wanted to see a sack full of wolverines tossed into a roaring river trying to claw their ways out. Where was the gnashing clawing for supremacy? I keep harping on this, because I think this is the overt failure of Suicide Squad making it a decent film instead of an epic cinematic experience.
Some bright spots were Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and that poor bastard in the panda suit somehow managing to hit anything with that ridiculous furry head on! They did an incredible job on the character design, especially Harley Quinn and Enchantress. I definitely loved the soundtrack too, and using “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots was a perfect choice to cap the film. If only Ayer had paid more attention to the lyrics.
Check out this quick “Sales Pitch” video from Jenny Nicholson for a great example of why this whole concept is insane!
