Turning evil supervillains into fleeting force of good
Suicide Squad (out of 4) Starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Viola Davis and Joel Kinnaman. Written and directed by David Ayer. Opens Friday at major theatres. 123 minutes. PG
Will Smith’s sharpshooter Deadshot nails Suicide Squad early on when he sarcastically asks his military minder about the need to audition: “What is this? Cheerleading tryouts?”
This serves as both the pertinent question and answer for David Ayer’s strange embrace of a movie, which continues to tantalize even as it overstimulates. It brings many exciting new characters to the big screen, along with the glum suspicion it’s merely a noisy roll-call for further adventures in what the geeks refer to as the DC Comics Extended Universe.
The basic concept is terrifically Trumpian: “the worst of the worst” of supervillains being brought together as a U.S. government-sanctioned covert task force to eliminate terrorists and other monsters too big and scary for conventional means of termination.
The casting and costuming are impeccable for this filmed-in-Toronto blockbuster, which makes local landmarks look like cool DC destinations.
Smith’s fatal and fatherly hit-man character Deadshot is the best role he’s had in a decade, his cynical zingers as lethal as his ammunition.
Margot Robbie is a drop-dead delight as Harley Quinn, a prison psychiatrist turned killer clown girlfriend of Batman’s arch-enemy the Joker, whom Jared Leto invests with ferocious charisma in a puzzling lack of screen time.
Also impressive are two of the squad’s “metahumans:” Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, an L.A. gangbanger and tattooed human torch, who fears he’s too powerful even to control himself; and Adewale AkinnuoyeAgbaje as Killer Croc, a cannibalistic creature of the underworld who exudes odd empathy.
The Squad expands with Jai Courtney as fleet-fingered Captain Boomerang, Karen Fukuhara as swordwielding Katana, Cara Delevingne as the supernatural Enchantress, Adam Beach as the rope-swinging Slipknot and Joel Kinnaman as their reluctant but stoic team leader Rick Flag. This barely begins a character tally also taking in Viola Davis as a sadistic and stone-cold government official (“She’s gangsta!” Deadshot admires), along with cameos from Ben Affleck’s Batman and Ezra Miller’s the Flash.
With all these moving parts, and a studio edict that Suicide Squad fit into the storylines of the failed Batman v. Superman and the forthcoming Justice League, it’s no wonder writer/director Ayer often seems adrift, lacking the realism, rigour and pacing he’s brought to his previous dramas, End of Watch and Fury.
His musical choices are similarly uninspired, with “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” leading a hit parade of onthe-nose rock tunes.
It’s funny, but not in a ha-ha way, that a movie built around baddies has the summer’s worst central nemesis, one that apparently wants to vengefully blow up the world because people spend more time on their smartphones than worshipping ancient gods.
A climactic confrontation set in Union Station resembles a Miley Cyrus tribute to the original Ghostbusters, or maybe a Victoria’s Secret show gone terribly wrong.
Still and all, Suicide Squad deserves to live, if only because it whets our appetite for what these super freaks will do in future chapters. Now that they’ve got the pesky introductions over with, maybe they can really get on the good foot to do the bad thing.