Suicide Squad
Cert: 15A. Now showing
It wasn’t meant to be this way. DC, the arch comic-brand nemesis to Marvel and home to Batman and Superman, was to punch back against the box-office tyranny of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite netting big bucks, Batman v Superman collapsed under the weight of its spandex-clad ambition earlier this year but it would do to help kickstart more DC franchises.
Suicide Squad, a super-villain Dirty Dozen with added Margot Robbie, was set to restore cred after that spectacular misfire. That task now falls to Wonder Woman (2017) because this allstar, magazine-emptying doodle is still not at the required standard.
Writer-director David Ayer (Training Day, Fury) has a lot on his plate and, like BvS, much ground to cover. A hefty and fun opening chunk is devoted to Viola Davis’s mean government agent pitching the idea of a covert crack team made up of bad guys who then, one-by-one, must be introduced to us. Get comfy.
Among the assembled are Deadshot, Will Smith’s hitman with a heart of gold, Cara Delevingne’s ancient sorceress and Jai Courtney as a tinny-swigging Aussie called Boomerang who — that’s right — wields a boomerang. El Diablo is a fire-spouting Latino and Killer Croc is a nasty humanoid lizard. That one of their number creates and becomes the very threat they are then sent off to tackle is a wonder of the shoddy screen-writing arts.
The centrepiece is Robbie, who fizzes as carnival psycho Harley Quinn, while Jared Leto’s overripe turn as the Joker (the character’s first outing since Heath Ledger’s 2008 tour de force) is not quite as bad as some are making out.
It ends in a dull light-show finale where character arcs creak and a childish tone belies its 15A cert. And all to a drearily clichéd rock-classics soundtrack. Fine, but really ought to have been better. es his teeth and essentially has to relearn how to play. They struggle through his rehab until she dares to need something for herself and without her he has to make a call about who he wants to be. Robert Budreau’s film is a clever and original take on the biopic genre. Whispery and jazzy and niche market, it is hooked around an excellent performance from Hawke.