ReviewFilm review: Suicide Squad - Will Smith, Margot Robbie in flawed supervillain adaptation

Perhaps the best you can say about this overstuffed, off-key ensemble piece is that is nowhere near as bad as Batman v Superman

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The supervillain team in Suicide Squad (category IIA), starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Jared Leto. David Ayers directs.

Published: 4:30pm, 3 Aug 2016Updated: 12:17pm, 23 Aug 2016

2.5/5 stars

With the deluge of superhero films showing no signs of ending, Suicide Squad sounded like it would be a breath of fresh air: instead of telling yet another story of do-gooders in tights, this would be a dark and gritty film with supervillains as protagonists.

That Warner Bros. brought in David Ayers – who’s made a career out of films centring around really bad people – to write and direct, and chameleon actor Jared Leto as the Joker – added to the promise of this DC Comics adaptation. But much like Batman v Superman , this movie is tripped up by a jumbled narrative and corporate machination: Warner Bros. is desperately chasing the highly successful Marvel film universe, and the only way to get there is to rush.

Consider how the Avengers came together in the Marvel films. By the time Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and others united as a team in 2012, they had each starred in at least one solo film, and had been known to audiences (in real time) for anywhere from two to four years. Their unity felt organic. Suicide Squad, on the other hand, introduces every one of its core player in the first 10 minutes of the film, via a montage with a voice-over explaining who they are and exactly what they do.

There’s the assassin-for-hire named Deadshot (Will Smith); Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the psychotic girlfriend of the Joker; Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a stereotypical Los Angeles Hispanic gang member with unexplained pyrotechnic superpowers; and a few more forgettable baddies with lame names like Captain Boomerang (guess his weapon of choice).

Viola Davis in a scene from Suicide Squad.

The film begins with these colourful miscreants already captured and behind bars; they’re set free again because high-level government agent Amanda Weller (Viola Davis) wants a team of expendable operatives to undertake dangerous secret missions. Imprisoned criminals are the best people to blackmail for the job, she reasons, because they have nowhere else to go, and the public wouldn’t care if they die.

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Perhaps the best you can say about this overstuffed, off-key ensemble piece is that is nowhere near as bad as Batman v Superman

Perhaps the best you can say about this overstuffed, off-key ensemble piece is that is nowhere near as bad as Batman v Superman