Got to see "Suicide Squad" recently. I wasn't expecting to like it much for a while now, expecting a simple, action-packed story, a dumb fun if you will... but even after lowering my expectations to a kind of film I am generally not a fan of, I guess it was fun, but I wasn't prepared for this dumb.
Where to start... first to get the obvious parts out of the way - plot is weak, villain is crap, Cara Delevigne can't act. I heard about all of this moths ago, so it is not something that bothered me all that much (again, I was expecting a simple action-packed story).
Now, to get to the things that killed this film to me:
First of all, my fear that this film will be too tame came true. This is the one film that should have been dark and gritty, but I didn't feel like I was watching bunch of hardened criminals at all, much less "worst of the worst". Matter of fact they screwed up these characters quite a bit. I have nothing against going for a more humane angle, but not just that film beats you over the head with those "emotional" moments that for most part fell flat, but, again, these so-called hardened criminals act nothing like it. I could get behind them wanting to make Deadshot more of an anti-hero, I wouldn't be crazy about it, but I'd be willing to accept it, but why the hell [BLACKOUT]Boomerang returns for final fight?[/BLACKOUT] Or Diablo calls the rest of the squad family? Or they all act like best friends after spending fifteen minutes in the city together? I didn't care to count how many times they mentioned being bad guys or got all friendly with each other, but it was way too many. They should have handled sickness bags under the seats like they do aboard airplanes (luckily, annoying kid in front of me was wearing a hoodie, so I improvised
).
The music (or rather songs) used in the first half of the film was for most part annoyingly jarring, nowhere more than in what's definitely a worst scene in the film for me... more about that later.
AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" when Boomerang was robbing the bank, amused me though. Probably because they used an Aussie band for an Aussie character and because of the fact that I used to play it years ago. Objectively, it was "fitting" in the same unsubtle way as the rest of the songs, so I guess it just got me on that level.
Now the Joker... I'm not a fan of what I saw in this film and it feels as if Leto was overacting occasionally. I didn't expect him to impress me that much in a "Suicide Squad" film though, and I need to stress out that they obviously cut much of his scenes.
Still, there were moments where they could have made the character shine. I remember that while watching pretty much every scene with him, I kept imagining how they should have done the scene instead. He was obviously tossed there because of Harley, so the character was greatly limited to that.
Which leads me to much bigger problem - the Joker/Harley relationship that was handled so f*****g terribly. They obviously didn't have the balls to depict the true, abusive nature of their relationship, something that a goddamn cartoon for children didn't have a problem doing. Knowing that they filmed the scene where Joker slaps Harley, it would seem that the abusive nature was indeed meant to be shown, but they forced the cut that makes Joker appear genuinely in love with Harley. Some things in this film disappointed me and some simply underwhelmed me, but this one genuinely pisses me off.
And now I come to the scene I hate with passion - the cringe-worthy scene of Harley jumping into the pool of chemicals with that terrible song that made it appear as something that is taken from a Tumblr fanfiction playing over it. What is most frustrating is the fact that it could have been one of the more visually enticing and impactful scenes in this film, instead it felt like watching one of those horrible shipping videos from YouTube. Matter of fact, I reckon there will be plenty of those after this film.
Anyway, to return to Leto's Joker himself - I'll withhold my judgment until I see him properly against Batman. I didn't like neither the gangster contextualization, ****ed up characterization of a love-struck psycho, nor the way Leto acted in some scenes, but I think there is still potential there. As I said, Joker was limited (and not just limited, but utterly screwed up) by being tied to Harley's story in this film, so I'm still not writing the character off, but it will take quite a bit to get me to like him in future films.
What is definitely the best thing in this film are performances. Again, I can't judge Leto's Joker properly yet, but aside from Kinnaman, who was boring as hell, rest of the cast was pretty good with Davis and Robbie standing out as best. And, surprisingly, I wasn't bothered all that much by Will Smith playing himself once again. He was amusing.
That much for the positives
p). Finally, editing in this film is terrible (again!). Characters are basically introduced three times and we are quite often either being told what should have been shown instead or what was already shown to us not long ago, making telling it again absolutely pointless.
I guess I might be off the mark with this, but I find it difficult to believe that both Snyder and Ayer forgot how to make films all of a sudden. I believe that someone at WB is forcing those cuts and that someone ought to be hanged by the balls and used as a piñata.
I'm not giving Ayer a pass, he screwed up enough without the cut that, more likely than not, WB forced, but that was the finishing move that killed this film to me. Studio needs to stop meddling with post-production of these films ASAP. I liked BvS despite lousy editing, but UC just shows how much it damaged the film... how many more DCEU films will they damage before they stop doing this? I am genuinely worried about "Wonder Woman" now.
To conclude my impressions of SS - it is a first DCEU film I really didn't like. Even after accepting the fact that the plot is almost non-existent and that villain sucks, the fact that it is way too tame and generic rubs me off the wrong way. The fact that they chickened out and completely bastardized the relationship between Joker and Harley, pissed me off greatly. This is not at all the film I was expecting Ayer to make.
. Jared Leto's Joker was.....meh. I still don't know if I outright hate his interpretation or just don't really care for it. I guess the latter. Things I didn't like aside from that was the terrible, lame ass villain and I felt the movie could've been paced better. It was either moving too fast or too slow the whole way through. Also, the third act was a bit of mess. Oh, and Amanda Waller = absolute badass.
, but I thought it was solid even with its flaws. While the villain was quite lame and the climax was very Ghostbusters slash Master's of the Universe, I had a good time and I did like most of the characters. It was certainly more coherent and in alot of ways had more heart than BvS.
