Fury auteur David Ayer gets to play with Batman’s Rogues’ Gallery and the result is an amusing, supernatural-tinged comic-book guys and gals on a mission flick.
Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) needs more meta-humans to keep America safe in the wake of Superman’s death. So she turns to the dark side of the force, more or less literally in the case of alien witch Enchantress (Cara Delevingne). When Midway City is torn apart by an eruption of supernatural power Joel Kinnaman’s long-suffering Rick Flagg has to lead into combat the assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), angry mercenary Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), half-man half-crocodile Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), repentant pyrotechnic Diablo (Jay Hernandez), and the woman who put the psycho in psychotherapy, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). But true love never did run smooth and the Joker (Jared Leto) is out to reclaim his woman from the forces of evil – i.e. the government.
All eyes were on Robbie’s take on Harley, and it’s a creditable one. There are notes of winsomeness and instability, and the accent is nice when it’s played up. Her brief interactions with Leto’s Mistah J are a comic-book fan’s delight to finally see in live action, but only capture part of the full twisted relationship. Leto is severely underused but makes an impact; he’s more or less Paul Dini’s comics Joker – sinister, but playful. Interestingly Leto’s method madness is apparent onscreen as his appearance in a scene seems to genuinely unsettle all the other players. Will Smith confirms the finding of Focus, that he has found where he left his charisma, even if Ayer doesn’t feed him enough good one-liners. Or anyone else for that matter. Perhaps he was too busy constructing a wishlist for his music supervisors. Suicide Squad‘s budget must have gone in large part on music rights as a preposterous amount of hit songs are blasted out at the least provocation. You could almost imagine Ayer was working through his frustration at never before having helmed a project with the heft to simply buy the rights.
Smith beautifully disses the ‘swirling trash in the sky’ that has become the cinematic convention of the apocalypse this summer, and somehow Suicide Squad feels more faithful to Ghostbusters than the travesty remake; with an ancient evil speaking with a low growl through a young woman, all leading to a confrontation at ornate steps leading to a portal to another dimension. This ‘trippy magic stuff’ as Harley dubs it is a world away from any previous Batman film, and with Batman making cameo appearances here, and the squad’s backstories being sketched in like so many short tales from Dini and Timm, the feel of a comic-book being (at times uncomfortably) plastered up on screen is omnipresent; especially a detail about the Joker’s luck. Smith and Kinnaman have a very Ayer arc, the oft wooden Courtney is surprisingly funny, and Davis is terrific in the surprisingly central role of Waller. But the film’s construction feels a bit off, rattling by in under two hours; the allegation that a severe and needless re-cut took place certainly seems supported by the finish product where a soulful bar scene jumps up a creative level and seems like a refugee from a better more muted movie.
Despite labouring under Zack Snyder’s ‘artistic direction’ somehow all concerned come out of this tour with credit. If only Affleck and Ayer could create their own DC visions utterly unconnected to the Arch-Positivist.
3/5
*Postscript – Aug 12th: After a week of revelations about cut Joker scenes it seems the choppy quality is Ayer’s vision being traduced, and I impugned him on the musical front. This is not David O Russell’s American Hustle jukebox wishlist, but likely how people who make trailers cut a film, sequence after sequence of 2 minute rawk montages…
Talking Movies 
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