There are some things worth recommending about David Ayer's 'Suicide Squad'- possibly one of the strangest superhero films for quite sometime now. The fact that it is strange, berserk and wild is itself noteworthy.
The premise itself is excitingly killer- a mish-mash of 'The Dirty Dozen' and 'Monsters Vs Aliens'- in which the grumpy senators and military generals decide to pit a bunch of freaks of nature against monsters whom they cannot quite tame or defeat. The intention here would be to defy convention and, in the process, take a stab at the masked guardians themselves. Sure, Ayer gets a fair part of the setup right- 'Suicide Squad' starts brilliantly, all its cocked guns poised to fire at point blank and score with a roaring script, some hilarious oddballs and some crackling action to go along with them. Hell, it even takes a dig at Batman in its own whimsical ways. However, that is just about it for the film, which is soon let down with the flimsy, generic plot and a plodding sentimentalism that sucks out the hedonistic thrill out of the proceedings. In short, the sum of its bits and parts is nothing more than just a good-looking music video.
Those bits, however, do make up a giddily entertaining musical montage that might be as deliriously exciting as watching either Prince or Michael Jackson groove, with wonderfully weird visuals and jaw-dropping sound. So, we get a stellar introduction to the first sight of sharp-shooting baddie Deadshot, sweating it out inside prison bars, while The Animals belt out creepily 'The House Of The Rising Sun', before the said character wears 'ball and chain' himself. Ayer starts presenting his super-baddies with delicious, rollicking style- subtitles of an assortment of wacky fonts pop up on the screen as each of the jail-birds is introduced to us while the film jumps from sleazy strip-joints to Gotham's sewers, from snow-bound alleys to river caves hiding dark mysteries- with a snappy pace that sets the film's comic book zeitgest very well indeed. Up to this point, the film looks very compellingly pulpy indeed.
A stern Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) follows the Lee Marvin example in recruiting a ragtag team made up of these far-from-heroic nasties to fend off 'metahumans'. This is her only way to protect the country, in 'a world full of monsters', as she puts it. Her outfit consists of Deadshot (seeking a shot at redemption and reconciliation with his tweeny daughter), Aussie assassin Captain Boomerang (who has a fetish for pink unicorns. Sound familiar?), remorseful Mexican vigilante El Diablo, angry mutant Killer Croc and, finally, the lusty and wise-cracking Harley Quinn, looking dreamily to be re-united with her dear Puddin, whom we will get to in sometime.
Sure, the film promises, for them, some nihilistic fun in the city streets. But all promise is robbed off right away, as Ayer hands us a redundantly cliched master-villain, looking too obviously like someone from a Marvel outing, and then strips the film of all its anarchic fun. It could have been fine to have a script with less portentious intensity and more off-the-wall fun for the crazy freaks to have a ball with. Tim Miller's 'Deadpool' was a nonsensical, generic plot enlivened by its titular anti-hero having a blast with gore, foul-mouthed digs and fourth wall-busting electricity. The eponymous villains of this film are given precious little to do than just get drowned into a swirl of sentimentalism that feels most unwelcome.
The action sequences are nothing special to talk about- except for Harley Quinn taking down some snarling beasts inside an elevator- and there is almost no excitement to even the big confrontation in the climax. This is itself another letdown, given how the film remains loyal to the quirky spirit of the comics itself. Lensman Roman Vasyanov keeps things shadowy and grim for most part but there are also some vividly nuanced bits in between- where the film sizzles with texture- like the beaded curtains in a strip club, the shanks of meat being chopped in greasy kitchens, or the stained bars of Harley Quinn's cage. But all the style and sizzle cannot make up for a glaring absence of fun and enthusiasm in the proceedings.
What, occassionally, makes the proceedings quite lively as promised is Harley Quinn's presence itself. Margot Robbie has always been blessed with a natural flair for sensuous mischief and the role of the most genuinely naughty lady of the comic books just gives her ultimate free rein to let it all loose. She remains constantly, irresistibly plucky, upsetting the most dreadfully serious moments of the script and single-handedly lifting the film from its po-faced seriousness. She also delivers, the one line, that totally trashes the film's stiffly predictable tenor in the climax, happily declaring that she is 'off her meds'. And she nails it totally when licking the bars of her prison cage with lusty relish.
Most of the cast performs awkwardly, though this has something to do with the claustrophobic nature of the dreadfully serious narrative and the way it squeezes dry all that is ripe for fun. A moment of relaxation- inside a bar- becomes oddly boring and dull in the way how these bad-asses just lament about their sorry lives rather than trade wisecracks and get the ball rolling. It is only Will Smith's Deadshot, who actually has some presence in a gang of mostly cardboard-cut characters. Smith gets the snappy, one-liner spouting nature of his character quite well and even when the film sinks under the weight of too much gloom, he remains, endearingly, the hero of the piece.
Anticipating viewers might be wondering about the film's biggest selling point- a sneak-peek at the new Joker, here played by method-acting star Jared Leto. His version is indeed a compellingly psychothic one, replacing the whacked-out survivor instinct of Heath Ledger's unforgettable rabble-rouser with a pompous, kingpin image more similar to Jack Nicholson's own take on the iconic villain. Leto shines in his scenes indeed, looking like a resurrected David Bowie in his 'Thin White Duke' years, and snarls and hisses magnificently. However, it will take a whole new film, a whole better plot and certainly an able director to get the best out of him. For the moment though, he passes the test and he will do.
It is the great sleazy dynamic that he shares with Robbie's Quinn that lends 'Suicide Squad' rare flashes of genuine heart and emotion. There is this one standout scene for Quinn's moment of truth- for Mister J to ask her out open about how much is she willing to commit romantically to him. It is a moment I would hate to reveal more of but the gushing romance between the two freaks is just, so godamn perfect that it almost breaks the heart.
It is also a core of unrealized emotional stakes. A more nifty film, at the hands of a true master (think David Lynch, for heaven's sake), would have teased these twisted emotions out and lent real, crackling fire to an otherwise generic plot. Unfortunately, while there is a lot of delicious style- and Ayer is certainly not as tastelessly unsubtle as Zack Snyder-there is precious little snap or soul to a film which could have been much more crazily entertaining. As Deadshot says it, the film should not have forgotten that they were all 'bad guys'.
My Rating- 2 And A Half Stars Out Of 5.
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