Film: Suicide Squad

GENRE: Action Adventure

RATING: PG-13 for violence and language
RUNTIME: 2 hours and 3 minutes

STARRING: Margot Robbie (Wolf of Wall Street, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot)

Will Smith (Bad Boys, MiB), Joel Kinnaman (The Killing, Robocop)

DIRECTOR: David Ayer (Fury, End of Watch)

WRITER: Ayer (Training Day, The Fast and the Furious)

PLOT: Supervillains can reduce their sentences by helping defeat an even bigger bad guy. Mistrust, violence and laughter ensues.     

FULL DISCLOSURE: Even though I originally was looking forward to this, I kept my expectations low after all the negative critic reviews.

STORY STUFF: The first half of the film is pretty good. They do a good job introducing the ‘heroes’ and setting up the squad. Then everything falls apart with gaping plot holes and a terrible big bad (and no, it’s not the Joker). However, I liked the squad and would watch a sequel if they could come up with the better villain/objective.   

ACTING STUFF: Margot Robbie is fantastic. She holds the whole film together. She in energetic, funny, sexy and fun. Jared Leto’s Joker will of course get compared to Heath Ledger, but I think he had a fun twist on it by making him actually crazy. I was a little sad that Will Smith’s Deadshot had a bit of a moral compass; I was hoping he could just be an evil badass for once. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to like or dislike Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller. I disliked her.  

ARTISTIC STUFF: While the final fight scene is a total mess and an earlier rescue mission is disjointed, the character introductions are masterful. My favourite aspect would have to be their song choices. Put ultra-dramatic score music under the squad getting ready and it flops, but put it to Eminem’s ‘Without Me’ and it is awesome. And here I thought Star Trek Beyond was going to win best song choice in a summer film (that’s not an actual award btw.)

VERDICT: Three stars out of five

SEE IT IF: You want to ogle Margot Robbie or prefer villains to heroes

UPCOMING REVIEWS: Jason Bourne