Suicide
Squad
(2016)
(SPOILERS) It’s
rare that a critical lambasting is completely
unwarranted, and by and large I was on board with the barbs thrown at Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Suicide Squad is a slightly different
bag, though. As expected, it’s an incredibly inelegant, unkempt movie, even
more so than those technicolour yawns masquerading as poster art, but not as unkempt
as some of those tinkered-with bombs of old, where the editing becomes a virtual
non sequiturs (such as the original 1998 The
Avengers – also featuring a character in a bear costume – or Highlander II: The Quickening). Part of
this is simply down to David Ayer being an incredibly inelegant, unkempt
moviemaker (such that you can almost believe his protestations that this really
is his director’s cut), but it’s also
evidence of a relatively modest production in conception being force-fed studio
diktats that come dangerously close to overwhelming its positives.
Did I like
it? Yes, up to around the point where, firmly embedded in Midway City, the
(Deadshot-monickered) Suicide Squad, a DC Dirty
Half Dozen, see Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) off in her helicopter and it
goes plummeting to the ground. There are still about another 50 minutes to go
after this, unfortunately (at least, it seemed like it). From there the movie teeters
into the slumped posture of just another increasingly generic, effects-crazed,
all-out-stuporous blockbuster: predominately dull, basically, or working on
standard suit notes of how these sorts of movies should play out. The big
confrontation is bizarrely similar to the end of Ghostbusters (the original) in terms of setting, while its failed
attempts at heroism parallel Ghostbusters
(the reboot); of the latter, neither movie should have been attempting to
portray the victorious acts of its protagonists sincerely in the first place.
Ayer, during the last half of the film, undoes most of the hard work he’s done establishing
an irreverent, dismissive and mocking attitude towards such righteous behaviour.
The result
is, he’s increasingly grinding metal with his characters and cast. The excuse
for taking down the bad guys (guy and girl) is that the squad have nothing
better to do, which at least isn’t exactly fine and upstanding, but neither is
it remotely inspired. It would be acceptable if that was as far as it went, but
the contingent attempts to inject humanity into this crew, after all that we’ve
been told and shown, feel like a betrayal. Sure, El Diablo is strictly
following his established arc, so he can be excused, and Jay Hernandez portrays
a thinly-sketched caricature of a guilt-wracked man with just enough
soulfulness that we buy into his state of mind.
Will Smith
as Deadshot (Floyd Lawton) is a different matter. Deadshot is the other
character with a moral centre, and even though he gets a (rather good) line
about not falling in love because he wouldn’t be the kind of guy who kills
people for a living if he did (to which Harley Quinn diagnoses his being
another textbook sociopath), his entire motivation is mooning over his doe-eyed
sprog. It’s reasonable to strike this balance up to a point, and I’d even say I
quite like Ayer and Smith are doing to a
degree. The problem is, it becomes repetitive, to the extent that
overweening star power must be blamed for giving Deadshot too much substance for
the purposes of portraying a stone-cold killer while simultaneously not enough
substance to justify the spotlight on what would, sans Big Willie Style, be just
another bad guy. Smith has charisma aplenty, but it isn’t in service of a
sufficiently interesting character, ultimately.
The real
tester here is the scene where Floyd mows down legions of multi-eyed zombies
(who reminded me ever-so-slightly of less blob-like Gel Guards in Doctor Who’s The Three Doctors, only less inspired; but then, inhabiting David
Ayer’s dream space would, I don’t doubt, be very much less than inspiring). It
should be an iconic moment of an anti-heroism at work, but it just kind of sits
there, not because it’s badly shot or edited, but because we aren’t
sufficiently behind Deadshot to award him such status.
So, when it
reaches the point of the Ghostbusters
confrontation, where the gang all get their moments, and all get gifted their
fantasy reality (well, three of them anyway, which I will come to in a bit), it
reaches overkill. I didn’t mind the three introductions to Smith that have been
noted in some reviews, as I enjoyed each of them, but by this point in the
proceedings, what is an effective-enough idea in concept merely elicits an “Oh,
get on with it!” (with the caveat that El Diablo’s involvement is the only
remotely engaging part).
I was
similarly unmoved by Harley Quinn trumping the Enchantress (Carla Delevingne)
with some heart-ripping, stabbing action, and that’s despite Margot Robbie’s
unstoppable force throughout the movie, be it understandably stopping her male
entourage dead when she dons her tighter-than-tight short shorts, or reeling
off frequently less-than-devastatingly-witty quips. Smith does his best with
average material, whereas Robbie does brilliantly with often decent material.
Until the bar scene, at any rate.
There’s
some peculiar stuff in her flashbacks that doesn’t really compute (exactly what
kind of acid is it that she and the Joker topple into; a very light facial peel
that simultaneously has a devastating impact on fabrics? But I’ll let that go
as expressionistic, even if nothing else in the movie supports such a reading),
but Harley Quinn only just about escapes with credibility intact when she’s required
to become emotionally engaged with her fellows (and thus not so fruit-loopy
after all; everyone drops into standard-issue responses when the scene requires
it, basically). I know it’s inevitable with this kind of thing that you have to
have some kind of empathy between the empathy-free, to support basic
interaction, but did it have to be quite as ineptly espoused as in that bar
scene?
Suicide
Squad walk into a bar (and guess who has to play bar lady?) They get all mushy. Did I miss the punchline? And even
the Japanese chick with the ghost sword (Katana, played by Karen Fukuhara; WB also
missed something, a trick in not rewriting her as Chinese, and thus a release
slot in a potentially highly-lucrative region), not actually part of the
criminal fraternity, but a few hours earlier wholly dedicated to the service of
Rick Flagg, leaves her boss on the street to his moping. I wouldn’t want her to
have my back in a tight spot. Or
perhaps she just really needed a drink? Or had an aversion to getting wet?
Anyway, the excuse for indulgent backstory(ies) works much less well here than
in Ayer’s earlier, punk-affected approach. Particularly when Flagg gets on
board.
So, while
there are some confident moments after this, notably Harley’s brief escape courtesy
of the Joker, the general feeling I had was that Ayer had soured his milk,
attempting to inject to much misplaced soulfulness into the proceedings. He might
at least have been balanced, if he really had
to have Harley, Deadshot and El Diablo display their bleeding (of fiery
bleeding) hearts. To wit, Jai Courtney’s Boomerang. I don’t have much to say
about Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), since as far as I can recall he
doesn’t have any backstory – he certainly doesn’t have a fantasy moment (that
might have been fun, or perhaps a bit too bestial), and his swimming skills
aren’t wholly impressive – but Captain Boomerang, and Courtney himself, surprised
me by being absolutely terrific... When he was written to be a knuckle-headed
moron, whose special skill appears to be swigging lager, wearing a tracksuit,
and tossing off a surprisingly hi-tech boomerang, that is.
When he’s being an idiot, in a kind of awesomely tragic way, I’d give him the
honour of being near-equal to Harley Quinn (whom he mutton-headedly attempts to
ask out at one point) for the movie’s top character, but there’s far too much
tempering of that dissolute flame. Increasingly, as the picture wears on, Boomerang’s
given lines alluding to how crazy he, or everyone else, is or conciliatory
gestures towards his compatriots suggesting he isn’t really that nuts, or even
that stupid, and that leads to a feeling it’s all an act. Which is
disappointing. The ideal would have been for Ayer to undercut the trio of
fantasies with Boomerang’s very own utopic vision, romping through a field astride
a plush pink unicorn, like a deranged outtake from Josie and the Pussycats (not that that movie itself isn’t deranged
and underrated). Alas, by that point Ayer seems to have forgotten all about
Boomerang’s cuddly toy fixation (he doesn’t even play Roachford’s Cuddly Toy in a scene where the Captain
rescues his beloved) and with it launched into neutering his own movie.
It doesn’t
help the back half of the movie that the villains are so so-so either, of
course (or that there’s little sense of trajectory or build-up because the
threat they pose is insufficiently defined). Delevingne is quite impressively unsettling
in her early incantatory scenes (I love the summons effect of her hand being
met by an inverted doppelhander, but that’s as visually seductive as her dark
arts are), but her brother Incubus is a soporific whirlwind of substandard CGI
once he’s unleashed, the kind of thing that looked lousy in the Mummy movies a decade and a half ago and
is thus even less so now. By the time she’s prettied-up for her full witch-on,
the most alarming thing about the Enchantress is Delevingne’s unfettered
eyebrows. Added to which, nothing about the siblings’ plan or conjurings has
anything in the way of suspense or dread (particularly when we cut to scenes of
global devastation).
It’s a
shame, as their entering the afflicted city armed and primed with lethal
implants is an effective set up of the kind only a good Escape from New York rip-off can be. And Viola Davis makes for an
effectively unflinching Lee van Cleef. Waller is one-note, sure, but Davis can
run with it and make it count. Old Joel Kinnaman is much less successful with squad
leader Flagg (he really doesn’t have much luck with movie roles, so it’s lucky
he keeps getting cast). He fails to make Rick sympathetic, interesting or
likable, and the incessant alpha-male arguments with Deadshot grow tiresome
very quickly, despite the occasional decent line (“You’re just a serial killer who takes credit cards”).
The first
half, though. It’s not as if it’s in any way perfect. Ayer uses music on the
soundtrack in such an elementary way, you’d be forgiven for thinking him a
novice. He picks classic tunes, sure, but do you put only obvious crowd-pleasers on a mix tape, so there’s no variation
in mood or tempo? If every scene is backed by an established classic, every
scene loses its lustre, diffusing the sought-after coolness. Tarantino can get
away with it because his tastes are so eclectic. You leave his movies going,
“What was that song?” (well, most of
the time; admittedly, I was less than enamoured by his wholesale lifting of The Thing in The Hateful Eight), whereas here the response is “Oh look, Ayer’s
picked another really literal, really
good tune that’s been used in movies dozens of times by this point”.
That aside,
the sheer brashness and swagger of the introductory passages had me onside.
There’s an energy and attitude here simply absent from the dramatically forlorn
BvS (when Wonder Woman is off-screen
at any rate). Affleck is effectively used in the apprehension of Deadshot and
Harley (more so with Harley – Batffleck gets a solid laugh for hitting a girl,
audiences always love that – as I wasn’t
really feeling the Deadshot confrontation) and even the Flash taking down
Boomerang (who couldn’t take down
Boomerang? The only thing missing was a scene where he trips over his shoelaces)
didn’t feel gratuitously continuity-fied. I’m not altogether sold on Affleck as
Batman; he leaves me a touch indifferent, because Affleck generally leaves me a
touch indifferent, but he’s better as the Caped Crusader than in his
mid-credits Bruce Wayne appearance.
I was also amused by the expiration of Slipknot,
and wondered if it was a sort-of homage to Executive
Decision, since Adam Beach bears a passing resemblance to a svelter Steven
Seagal.
I didn’t
have especially high expectations for Suicide
Squad, so while I wouldn’t say they were exceeded, I at least didn’t go
away disappointed. I don’t think the kind of onset antics encouraged by Ayer
are to be respected, mostly because the movies he tends to make are so far from
being works of art that his “method” approach comes across as juvenile play directing/acting
(and I know he has a military
background, but all I can say is, it’s a shame it didn’t instil more maturity,
if he thinks he’s genuinely achieving something meaningful with this kind of
movie). But more power to them, I guess, if his cast feel like they’re back in
drama school heaven. Certainly Smith, freed from the shackles of Scientology
and looking for something else to believe in, seems enamoured (they’ve got that
Netflix movie coming up, which on paper sounds very iffy, thus ideal for Ayer).
The movie
doesn’t make me want to send dead rats, or used condoms, to Warner Bros, so on
that level it should be seen as something of a success. But then, I’m not one
of the DC faithful. Even if its destination is disappointingly familiar, Suicide Squad spends a good amount of
time behaving refreshingly differently, which sets it apart from the current
superhero crop (and I include Deadpool in
that, which all-too quickly becomes reliant on flogging its dead meta-horse).
I’ve hardly
mentioned the Gruffalo Joker, have I? Leto (a mere seven years between him and
the age Nicholson played the definitive big screen Joker, which makes you think)
seems pissed off that he’s hardly in it, which has to be a reason to
congratulate Ayer, if nothing else. I suspect the director had lofty ideas
about making the Joker Lector-esque in his sparing use, so as heighten his
impact, but in a movie as choppy as this that kind of thinking is never going
to pan out. Either that or he thought the performance was terrible and was
salvaging it, or thought Leto was a
jerk (heaven forfend) and wanted to punish him. As it stands, though, I thought
the Jared was fine. He can’t hope to match Robbie’s performance, so there’s an
imbalance there as it really needs gloriously demented chemistry, and he never
really shows the Joker as a bona fide, intimidating lunatic, or even just a
mildly amusing lunatic, but visually the Gruffalo conceit rather works in terms
of Ayer’s overall tone. I’m not yearning to see what of the Jared’s performance
ended up on the cutting room floor (a movie’s worth of material, it seems), but
he doesn’t sully the Joker’s legacy either. Now,
the Captain Boomerang cut of Suicide
Squad; that I’d like to see. 90 minutes of Jai and his pink unicorn would
be Jai Bless bliss.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.