Suicide Squad

I saw Suicide Squad, and it was just ok. When it first came out I noticed it was getting bad reviews, but I had enjoyed Batman v Superman, which had also gotten panned by the critics, so maybe I would turn out liking Suicide Squad as well. I watched Suicide Squad with a friend of mine two weeks after its release, and at the end of the movie I walked out I could say that it wasn’t that bad, but it also wasn’t particularly good. Some things in the movie worked, and some didn’t. Though I won’t spoil the main plot of the movie, there are a few things I want to quickly mention.

As would be expected from a film with such a large cast of characters, not everyone gets equal levels of screen time. While some like Deadshot and Harley Quinn get bits of backstory and character development, others like Katana and Killer Croc are kind of just there and only serve to fill up space. Jared Leto’s take on Joker is something I’m still undecided on, as while he does capture the classic psychotic traits we expect from the character, the Joker in Suicide Squad is a crime lord, which seems rather mundane for him. What I did like was Will Smith’s performance as Deadshot, and I would go so far as to say that he carries every scene that he’s prominent in. As someone who’s not into comic books, I had never heard of the film’s main villain, and though I’m told the villain is fairly well known in the DC universe, I think Suicide Squad might have been helped by having a more prominent, higher profile villain. Lastly, I find it very strange that members of the Justice League are MIA from the movie’s final confrontation. The situation the Suicide Squad is sent in to deal with has been going on for two days, and in the movie both Batman and Flash make cameo appearances early on, so we know that the heroes already exist at this point, so where are they? I think we have to assume that Suicide Squad takes place after the events of Batman v Superman, because otherwise it would make no sense that Superman didn’t notice what was going on and put an end to the crisis before things got worse.