Suicide Squad review – Why so serious

Suicide Squad is a conventional action film with an unconventional cast of characters. If you like generic action films (such as Taken or Lucy), you’re likely to really enjoy Suicide Squad. For everyone else, it’s a pretty standard movie that is made slightly more enjoyable thanks to its cast of characters.

As much as I would love to slag it off like other critics have, many of their criticisms are unjust. Suicide Squad is a fun film to watch, it’s just a disappointing to see something with so much potential lower itself to generic movie tropes and a dull storyline.

The start of Suicide Squad is strong. Each villains’ backstory – told by Amanda Waller – is entertaining and unique, all loaded with interesting characters and lore. It’s a good buildup to the main events, but unfortunately the film struggles to follow it up in any meaningful way.

Whilst each individual member of Suicide Squad had interesting foes (including crime lords and superheroes) with whom they had a relationship with, the movie’s main villain has no connection with any of the members. He’s a blank slate, dull with no interesting personality or chemistry with any characters. Worst yet, all of his henchmen are literally faceless zombies.

Because the protagonists are fighting meaningless villains for the bulk of the film, all of the action scenes feel pointless. They’re completely unjustified and are just there fill the space between dramatic sequences; almost like the producers thought that the audience would lose interest if the action wasn’t included. It plays like a mediocre action game, with waves of enemies being placed in each new area which the protagonists have to kill in order to progress. It’s tiresome by the end of the movie.

Other forced moments also exist, such as there being several cringeworthy jokes that are wedged into scenes in order to lighten the mood. You can see they were trying to mimic Deadpool‘s humour, but never succeed at achieving this. It’s an awkward mix between The Dark Knight‘s sincerity and Guardians of the Galaxy‘s tongue in cheek approach. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work.

So what is good about Suicide Squad?

All of Suicide Squad’s cast provide an excellent performance. You can tell the script was pretty lifeless, but somehow they managed to deliver an entertaining experience nonetheless. Especially Jared Leto (Joker) and Jai Courtney (Captain Boomerang), who both create charismatic characters who are greatly underused.

Also, the soundtrack is also impressive. But, just like the standout actors, is used ineffectively. In order to fit the entirety of the songs, they try to include them in scenes that they don’t necessarily fit. It’s still nice to hear them, however it seems like if there were less songs they would be utilised more effectively.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much else that’s right with Suicide Squad. It’s a shame, because there was so much potential. It’s not a bad film, it’s not a great film; it’s just okay. I would look forward to seeing more of these characters in the future, but I am unsure whether they will ever make an appearance again in DC’s quickly dying universe.