So Many Helicopter Crashes
David Ayer’s Guide To Writing A Screenplay In Six Weeks: if in doubt, crash a helicopter. The film relies on downing whirlybirds no less than three times (plus a few other CGI ones that go down during Incubus’ rampage), and it feels lazier and lazier each time. The first one is completely unnecessary, other than as a trailer moment — every character on board walks away from the wreck without a scratch, seemingly. The second at least provides a moment of fake drama (not one, but two characters are incorrectly presumed dead from it), and then a third happens literally two minutes later, and once again fails to kill the major character on board, Amanda Waller. Are helicopter crashes much more survivable than we thought? Does Ayer have a grudge against helicopters? We fear we’ll never know the answer.
The Film Has A Real Problem With Women
Even by the remarkably sexist standards of the superhero genre, “Suicide Squad” feels particularly sour in its treatment of its female characters. Bar Viola Davis, almost every other character is defined by their relationship to a man (even Katana, who gets to deliver a monologue to her sword, representing her dead husband). Deadshot gets an off-screen ex-wife deemed to be a less suitable parent than a serial murderer. Boomerang leers at the women and spouts some bullshit about “you know what they say about the crazy ones,” while the film’s most malevolent villains are both women in Waller and The Enchantress. El Diablo is essentially portrayed as a domestic abuser, a man with a temper whose fiery outburst at his wife led to her death. And while Harley Quinn might seem like an interesting female character on the surface, she’s essentially been brainwashed by The Joker (her jacket says “Property of the Joker” on the back), is deeply obsessed with him despite some crappy treatment by him (he essentially pimps her out to Common). She’s far more sexualized than most comic-book version of the character (including a leery shot of her slipping on her outfit), and for all her purported edge, is shown to have her deepest fantasy be of nuclear family domesticity with the Joker. It’s all deeply, deeply gross, and nowhere near acceptable in the year 2016.
It’s Also Racist
You would hope that a film that (to its credit) features Will Smith and Viola Davis in starring roles would manage to avoid racist stereotyping. But once again, “Suicide Squad” has never found a lowest common denominator it couldn’t crawl along. Smith wears a weird Blaxploitation pimp hat while he’s not on duty, while the coding of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s Killer Croc feels like a grim stereotype, with his one request being that he wants to watch BET. Every other character of any ethnicity feels like they’re sticking to one trait too — El Diablo is a heavily tattoed South Central gangbanger, Katana has a sword. The cast might be diverse, but the actors don’t get to play characters, they’re playing ethnicities.
There’s Little Narrative Flow, And The Story Often Doesn’t Make Sense
Not since “Jonah Hex” have we seen a major movie that smacks so much of being cut together by too many cooks (we were shocked to see John ‘brother of Dan & Tony’ Gilroy credited, given he usually turns in excellent work). The movie often doesn’t seem to have any internal logic — Boomerang bolting when his neck-bomb is turned off, but he returns for the next scene without any explanation. The opening is a mis-structured mess, frequently repeating itself, and it continues late into the third act — even though we already know how the Enchantress came to be, Rick Flagg repeats the information and instigates another brief flashback in the third act. It doesn’t even really set its rules down — the rules of the Enchantress’s powers are so vaguely laid down that it’s hard to feel that she’s a threat, because you have no idea of what she’s capable of.
The Action Is Incoherent & Boring
Maybe we could forgive some of the film’s flaws if it at least delivered some memorable action sequences. But the film can’t even deliver on that front. Though the entire second half of the film is essentially an extended battle, it’s all basically muddy, shot with a poor sense of geography, repetitive, and entirely lacking in the kind of beats that make for a memorable sequence. The endless waves of crispy tadpole zombie things are deeply dull, and the fights basically just add up to people continually mashing or shooting things — we don’t even get characters with impressive powers, really. It makes even the mostly lousy sequences in “X-Men: Apocalypse” look masterful.
Batman Is Still A Jerk
Yes, you’ve heard and seen that Batman is in “Suicide Squad,” a cameo that only serves to throw bad guys in jail, thus explaining how some super criminals got locked away. But in his brief moments of screentime, Batman is still an asshole, punching a woman (Harley Quinn) in the face, and attempting to resuscitate in a way, that as Ayer shoots it, feels skeevy. Then, in the mid-credits scene, Bruce Wayne turns up and makes a sinister deal with Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the insinuation being that he’s going to shut down someone who knows the truth about her operation. So Batman’s job now includes… intimidating journalists or whistleblowers? What a hero…
Joel Kinnaman Is Super Bland
Joel Kinnaman had such a promising career start in the Swedish crime film, “Snabba Cash,” perhaps because it was a gritty role centered around desperation. Now, we’re not sure if it’s the generic roles or what, but Kinnaman (outside of “The Killing” which he was pretty good in, minus his accent) continues to take bland role after role (or is just miscast like his Republican hopeful in “House Of Cards”). In “Suicide Squad” Kinnaman is fairly bland again, stuck in a straight-man role where he is humorless and exacting in a generic military way. It doesn’t help his character is rather non-existent, a foot soldier stool for Amanda Waller and just a field officer with little power. Kinnaman needs a new career direction asap.
Jared Leto Is Bad, But Then The Joker Is Barely Relevant Anyway
The addition of The Joker to the movie feels like it was essentially a studio note — a chance to boost the movie by including one of the most recognizable villains in fiction. But he barely plays into the film — cropping up every so often in an attempt to rescue Harley, but seen mostly in flashback, never impacting the plot or playing a scene with any major cast member except Margot Robbie. The movie even blows his introduction: compare the opening scene of “The Dark Knight,” and its iconic reveal of Heath Ledger’s Joker, to the first glimpse of him in this film… sitting across a table from Robbie in a dull two shot. Then again, all of this feels like something of a blessing: Leto’s pretty bad in the part, to be honest. Leto can be a talented actor, but whereas Ledger had a consistent and clear take on the character that was unlike anything else done with him before, Let’s performance throws a bunch of tics at the wall and sees what sticks. The answer: very little of it.
Anything you think we’ve overlooked, good or bad? Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments.