Enter Task Force X, a band of dangerous misfit villains that must work together to complete their undercover black ops mission in order to reduce their prison sentences. At the helm of this...suicide squad? is the hard-nosed, unscrupulous (dare I say...bitch?), Amanda Waller (Viola Davis). Task Force X is her baby and she's not gonna let it fail, the world needs a team to stand up against the possible threat of an evil Superman type villain, and this is it. How will Waller keep control you ask? Well much like Bob Hauk in 'Escape from New York', Waller has implanted tiny explosive devices in each team members neck. Should any of them think of running off or insubordination, the device will be triggered and their heads will pop. Because originality was late for work the day they came up with that.
So lets meet this team of naughty spawns, role call! OK up first is the team leader Rick Flag played by Joel Kinnaman. This guy is an army special forces Colonel and brought in by Waller to keep control. He's the only team member that isn't a criminal. He's also played in a very bland, boring, generic way by Kinnaman who apparently seems to think of himself as the bee's knees with his annoying southern drawl. It doesn't matter how southern you play him Kinnaman, its not cool.
Next up is the token stereotypically sexualised female character, that just happens to be Harley Quinn in this movie, played by Margot Robbie. So Harley is a girl, a sexy girl with blonde hair and she wears very tight booty shorts over fishnet stockings. Now there's nothing wrong with this of course but...well I'm not a teenage so I'm not gonna fawn over how great Robbie is purely because of this. Anyway Quinn has a comically large mallet, and a baseball bat and...errr...she can do acrobatics and stuff...OK there is literally no real reason for Quinn to be in this movie, there I said it. She's only here because she's basically a very popular character and that's it. When you are going up against a supernatural force, or a super powered alien force, what fucking use is a flirty blonde dressed like a stripper wielding a comically large mallet??
Quinn's love interest the Joker (Jared Leto) is of course in this movie, mainly because you need him as they included Quinn, can't have one without the other. So much you could say about this incarnation, did I like the look? No not really, its too gangster, too bling, too punk. This Joker looks like a goth teenage who's runaway from home after being scolded by his parents. I didn't really like his blinged up world, such as the gold dripping from his person in some scenes, his pimped up purple super car, ugh! just too much. I quite liked the fact that he's a basically a lowlife mobster, I liked his henchmen in their quirky masks, I liked some of his outfits such as the tuxedo, I liked some of his dialog and deliveries. On the other hand, I didn't like the tattoo's, I didn't like some of his other over the top Jim Carrey-esque deliveries, I didn't like his laugh, and I didn't like how his SWAT body armour had 'JOKER' printed on it towards the end. Overall Leto's version of the Joker was very mixed for me (what little there was of it), not terrible but not exactly what I would have gone with.
Next, Deadshot played by Will Smith...oh Jesus! So its Will Smith which basically means its not Deadshot and don't be expecting to see that classic mask either cos it ain't happening. There was never any chance of the smug Smith covering up his face for the whole film so what we get is essentially Will Smith being Will Smith as he's done in various other action flicks over the years. Honesty, Smith's performance is no different, he may as well be anyone, its just the same spiel with this guy.
Step forward Captain Boomerang played by Jai Courtney. Now this is yet another example of what the flying fuck is this character doing in this film? The guy is basically a crook and that's it! Sure he might be a good crook, a tough crook, an Aussie crook, but he does nothing, he has no powers! He throws some kind of electronic boomerangs that are almost completely ineffectual unless you want some aerial CCTV surveillance. Yes I can fully admit that Courtney is in fact one of the best performances in the film, its great to have an rough Aussie accent in the film and he's indeed funny. But alas his character is utterly useless, he's a bloke with a bad haircut and facial hair.
Straight outta da hood is El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a Latino ex-gang member who is probably the most powerful member on the team...but doesn't wanna use them. Naturally being an ex-gang member from LA you expect lots of inane urban dialog such as 'hommie' and 'homes' etc...Deadshot uses this urban dialect when he interacts with him, which is just plain stupid sounding. His outfit seems to consist of a white vest (simple urban street wear) and facial tattoo's which are presumably gang related. This guy does little more than mope around refusing to unleash his powers. When he does its impressive, so much so it renders his human form completely pointless and boring frankly as his fire demon-like form is way more interesting. Should of cast Rick 'Zombie Boy' Genest for this character.
Killer Croc up next played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Easily the coolest and most intriguing looking character, everything about this guy just makes you wanna know more. He eats people, he actually lives in the sewers, he actually moves like a crocodile in and out of the water, he has super strength and he looks damn evil. In fact this guy is so out there and seemingly deadly its kinda makes you wonder how he could ever be tamed for the team. This guy is like a mutated splicing of Hannibal Lector and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. The makeup is excellent for Croc, he genuinely looks scary, you're never really sure what he's gonna do, he sounds badass, his backstory is badass, he is badass. Unfortunately much like some other characters, he pretty much does feck all except for grunting here and there and wearing a really stupid outfit.
Slipknot, played by some bloke called Adam Beach. Kinda cool character name, don't know anything about him but it doesn't matter anyway because he's killed off very quickly with the old exploding neck device. We all knew someone would have to be used for that plot point, and it was Slipknot. Hell this guy doesn't even get any backstory setup unlike everyone else. Yet again, crap addition to the team, what does he do? He can scale walls really well, really quickly...oh and he can grapple really well too. K, thanks for that, next!
June Moore, an archaeologist possessed by an evil spirit that transforms Moore into Enchantress, a powerful supernatural sorceress (played by Cara Delevingne). Finally a character that could actually stand up to an alien super force or other supernatural baddies. One problem, she's a bitch and a turncoat and becomes the films villainess, bummer for Waller. Enchantress seeks revenge against mankind for imprisoning her within some relic in a cave that Moore discovered blah blah blah. She also has a brother called Succubus in the same situation, together they want to destroy the human race. Such a weak villain geez, she looks cliched, uninteresting, yet more tattoo's, a poor storyline and just uses lots of flashy CGI projectiles and whatnot. Succubus is just another large CGI demon type entity that stomps around firing out these weird tentacle-like projectiles. Not really sure what these tentacle things do to people, not really sure what Succubus is supposed to be doing or why Enchantress even needs him. Together they are somehow building this machine weapon thing to wipe out mankind which just happens to be another CGI beam into the sky with lots of floating debris everywhere, ugh!
Lastly we have Katana (Karen Fukuhara) and a prime example of too many characters in one movie. This Japanese swordswoman is here for no real reason at all. She is supposed to protect Flag but we don't really see much of that. I'm genuinely unsure why they included this character, guessing more footage of her was cut. This character looks lame with her childish Halloween mask, she isn't really intimidating, she looks too young, and she merely stands around being mouthy to people whenever she is addressed. Her sword has supernatural powers...but we don't see any of that so who cares.
This movie was very very choppy, clearly edited to hell and clearly torn between about four different plots! Task Force X, the Joker's crime syndicate, the Joker and Quinn's relationship in flashbacks and lastly the supernatural Enchantress plot; all of which is packed together awkwardly. There is also so much crapola that either doesn't make sense or is just plain dumb. Waller kills her own staff at one point, why? because they are apparently not cleared for the information they were working on at that point. But, but...why did you use them? Isn't there some kind of protocol for using the right people for the right cases? Couldn't you just transfer them to another case or something when you no longer needed them?? Does this mean Waller is now a wanted criminal??? Like what the hell lady! Lastly, Ayer makes the bad guys out to be good guys, he turns them into goodies essentially by making Waller (supposedly a goodie at first) ruthless. But does this spoil these characters for the future?? They aren't suppose to be good guys, but now they are, hmmm.
On top of that you have nonsense like the Joker supposedly going down in a helicopter crash and somehow surviving. All the special forces bullets never seem to do anything but when Task Force X come along their bullets are lethal. Apparently Harley Quinn can kill the supernatural beings quite easily with a bat when everyone else requires guns. All the special forces guys are killed willy nilly because they are apparently useless, even in body armour, whilst Quinn and co strut around in casual clothes. A simple bomb kills the supernatural superpower? GQ Edwards (Scott Eastwood) allows himself to get blown up, but surely it didn't have to go down that way? And at the start when the team are suited up, they are all given their regular clothes and weapons.
I get why, because fans wanna see these characters in their original outfits. But plot wise it makes no sense, why would they allow Quinn, Croc, Diablo, Boomerang etc...to dress as they do? Wouldn't they actually be better protected in the same kind of outfits as the special forces guys? And why the flip would they allow Quinn to use her baseball bat or mallet? Again, how are those objects effective exactly? The only one actually kitted out sensibly is Deadshot.
This movie tries to hard. All too obvious with the soundtrack; I swear you've only been watching about 5 minutes and the movies already gone through about half a dozen tracks! I didn't count but Ayer used a lot of tunes in this movie, Jesus! Literally every scene has a different track slapped over it, some are fine, some are completely out of place (much like the movies overall humour). Half of the characters didn't need to be there or are simply useless, painfully obvious for some. Everything simply revolves around Flag, Quinn and Deadshot, mainly Quinn and Deadshot. And that's only because Quinn is massively popular (possibly because of horny teenage males), and Deadshot is played by Will Smith, so he has to be front and centre, without the mask, which is utterly lame. Yes I realise this is the extended cut I'm reviewing but it matters not. I never saw the theatrical cut but if its apparently worse than this then...shit! Put simply, the movie starts out quite well despite the thick thick narration and onscreen text, but quickly disintegrates into a generic slapped together mess of monolithic proportions.
5/10
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