Suicide Squad (2016)

 

Suicide Squad has too many characters and too many backstories to be a coherent film. Simply put, there’s just too much stuff to keep track of. The great Viola Davis plays government official Amanda Waller, who recruits a group of supervillains to help with Task Force X. Well, “coerces” might be more accurate than “recruits.” They all have a bomb implanted in their necks that will be exploded if they try to escape or refuse to help with the dangerous missions with which they’ve been tasked. The actors playing the parts of the villains are all first-rate: Will Smith is Deadshot, Margot Robbie is Harley Quinn, the underrated Jay Fernandez is El Diablo, Jai Courtney is Captain Boomerang, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje is Killer Croc, and Adam Beach is Slipknot. Each one has special talents, and each one gets a bit of a flashback to when she/he became a villain before the film returns (somewhat, temporarily) to its main narrataive. Jared Leto portrays the Joker, the lover of Robbie’s Harley Quinn, but Leto’s performance suffers from the inevitable comparisons to Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance as the same character. At the center of much of the narrative is a character known as Enchantress, a witch who is building a machine that will destroy humanity, very typical “end of the world” stuff for superhero movies. However, the building of said machine seems to take forever, and the movie keeps taking side trips to those very underdeveloped stories about how the villains became who and what they are. Davis is tough and effective, but this character doesn’t really challenge her abilities. She almost coasts throughout the film. Robbie steals the movie from the rest of the large and talented cast. She seems to be having the most fun, and she shows the most emotional range of any of the actors. That is due, in part, to the script that gives her character the widest range of possible emotions to feel, particularly in the scenes she gets to play opposite Leto’s Joker. A more streamlined film, one that doesn’t include cameos from almost all of the DC Comics heroes (Batman, Flash, even Aquaman), one that primarily focuses on a rich character like Harley Quinn, would be much more exciting.

Oscar Win: Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling