Rating of
2.5/4
"Suicide Squad" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 06/14/19
A motley gang of sociopaths and criminals are recruited by the government as a response team to answer the new threat posed by superhuman powers.
The Dirty Dozen gets the superhero treatment in this rather desperate attempt to cling to the MCU's coat tails. While Marvel have pretty much perfected their winning formula DC is very much still trying to find its feet, their films feeling very much like a series of cheap knock-offs rather than a successful franchise in its own right. The only character with any real meat to them is the ever-likeable Will Smith's Deadshot and his ham-fisted attempts at redemption, but the rest of the roster is little more than a collection of colourful cardboard cut-outs. We have Colonel Flag (AKA "crap Captain America"), Killer Croc (AKA "crap Hulk"), Captain Boomerang - I'll say that again, Captain Boomerang - (AKA "crap Hawkeye") and Harley Quinn whose sole superpower seems to be to look good in hotpants. Although the action is quite well handled by David Ayer, the dialogue is weak - the "banter" is pretty much just Margot Robbie saying things like "Let's do something evil! What? What did I say?" ho ho ho - and Cara Devingne is pretty poor as the villain of the piece who wishes to destroy the world because...erm, she wants to for some reason. There's enough eye candy and explosions to stave off boredom but it's also impossible to care what happens because the characters are so underwritten and to be frank, rather lame. The result is something akin to Guardians Of The Galaxy in that it's trying to be "edgy", but in its try-hard desperation actually comes across as juvenile instead.
Not quite the disaster I was led to believe it was, but it pales in comparison to the vast majority of Marvel's cinematic outings.
