Movie Review - Suicide Squad

So let me first address the controversy over Rotten Tomatoes. First of all, the website does not give ratings themselves. The ratings are determined by the reviews of critics so if you want to let your anger out, do so on the critics themselves, not Rotten Tomatoes or similar sites. Got it? OK. Now onto Suicide Squad. In a year where superheroes are going against one another, it seems that both Marvel and DC want their villains to get the recognition that they deserve and in doing so, Fox made Deadpool on Marvel's behalf to apologise for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and it was a great film. DC on the other hand, decided to make a film based on one of their lesser known properties in the hopes that we can finally have Harley Quinn on the big screen, give Will Smith another great film after starring in a number of flops in recent times and have the film be the Guardians of the Galaxy of DC because the main characters are a**holes (though unlike the Guardians, they are actually full on villains) and because there is a need to top the soundtrack of that Marvel film. Now as any hardcore DC fan would know, this is not the first ever Suicide Squad film. It is for live action and big screen films, but not the first one overall. The first film actually turns out to be a direct to home media anime film called Batman: Assualt on Arkham and as the name implies, it does indeed take place in the timeline of the Arkham games. Anyone who has been reading my blog up to this point will know of that already. Rather than compare both films because of their many differences in character line ups and stories, this will be reviewed with any comparisons but I may say if this is better or worse than that particular film at the end, but that's it. So with that out of the way, let's dive in to the film:

Taking place after Superman's disappearance from the world (see Batman V Superman to know what I mean), intelligence operative Amanda Waller (played by Viola Davis) assembles a team of super villains to use in high ranking missions for the US government under the command of Colonel Rick Flag (played by Joel Kinnaman). Their goal is to succeed in missions given to them in which they will be given some time off from their sentences if successful, or die if not (including any attempts to escape the mission). The line up in this film includes Harley Quinn (played by Margot Robbie), Deadshot (played by the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air himself, Will Smith), Captain Boomerang (played by Jai Courtney), Killer Croc (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), El Diablo (played by Jay Hernandez), Slipknot (played by Adam Beach) and Katana (played by Karen Fukuhara), the last one not being a criminal, but rather a voluntary member of the team. Before missions, each member gets a bomb implant which will kill them if their disobey Flag, get him killed or escape (Katana because of her position on the team, does not get a bomb implant). In this film, they are tasked with taking down Enchantress (played by Cara Delevingne) who with her newly reborn brother, plans to take over the world and so its up to the team to stop her while also dealing with the likes of Joker (played by Jared Leto), Batman (reprised by Ben Affleck) and the Flash (reprised by Ezra Miller) along the way.

Regarding Batman and Flash, they both have talk-able cameos where Batman is taking down Deadshot, Joker and Harley Quinn (and also appears in a mid-credits scene as well) and Flash taking down Captain Boomerang in flashbacks. So I think the only bad thing about this film is the villain. Don't get me wrong, the actress is a very good actress, but the problem with her character is that its just your generic take over the world villain and as we all know, that cliche has been done to death many times and I think that's where the film is at its weakest. But despite that bad thing, the casting is great. Jai Courtney who often has a reputation of being in bad films that may or may not be his fault, actually performed quite well in this film and added some authenticity to his character which is better than just doing a regular American accent for an otherwise Australian character. Margot Robbie was great as Harley Quinn and not only acted the part, but looked the part as well. Can't complain too much about Will Smith because he's a great actor in whatever he does. I liked that Killer Croc (I'm not even going to spell the actor's name again) wasn't CGI or motion capture because I kind of feel that it would've been a cheap trick to do that, but I'm glad they didn't as a realistic Killer Croc is better if not a tad expensive, but totally worth it. I don't know much about the rest of the squad, but outside of the squad, I liked Jared Leto's Joker. Its not quite up to the standard set by the late Heath Ledger, but he does play out as a psychopath and a gangster (the young sort) but not quite the anarchist that Ledger is (there's even a hint of Mark Hamill in his take on the character). Something that DC has been against using since Green Lantern is Marvel like and kudos to this film for bravely having some humor put in as it works surprisingly well for the most part. So really its just the story and villain that let's the film down, but everything else about the film is great. Plus it has a mid-credits scene as well so make sure to stay in your seat for that. Its not really worthy of the rating that Rotten Tomatoes gave it, but I understand where the critics are coming from when they talk about the film. I would say that the animated film has its good moments as well, but for a film where the world is at stake, its somewhat better than the animated film, despite the problems it has. 9/10