Suicide Squad
Director: David Ayer
Starring: Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Jared Leto, Cara Delevingne,
Two stars
The continuing box-office success of Marvel’s Avengers movies finally motivated DC Comics to follow suit and start building an interconnected cinematic universe featuring characters from their own huge library of comic-book heroes.
Already this year we have had Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which also introduced Wonder Woman and, briefly, Aquaman, The Flash and Cyborg). A proper Justice League movie is due in November next year – in the meantime, Suicide Squad is the first proper DC team-up film to hit the screen.
As has seemingly become the norm, films adapted from DC Comics are darker in tone than the Marvel offerings and have better premises – yet where it most matters, in the entertainment stakes, they have been lacking.
And despite all the fab-looking trailers, it turns out that Suicide Squad falls into the same trap and is one monumental misfire.
Nearly all the good stuff happens in the opening sequence. Viola Davis is a complete badass as federal agent Amanda Waller, who devises the seemingly preposterous idea of assembling a team of super-villains as the best hope of fighting off potential threats from other supervillains, or heroes who go rogue.
What if Superman went bad, she argues? Who would defeat him? Clearly she did not watch Batman v Superman, when the Dark Knight was able to do just that. Still, nobody questions her logic – and why would they, given that since America became a post-war superpower, successive administrations have used similar logic to justify foreign interventions. Just in case you need a little help with this allegorical aspect, Suicide Squad features a 7,000-year-old witch called Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) who uncovers Iran's mythical nuclear-weapons plans.
It doesn’t take long for the film’s incomprehensible “plot” to reveal itself to be a mundane excuse for fights and explosions.
Director David Ayer struggles to introduce a plethora of characters that will be unfamiliar to anyone but comic book die-hards. The two that stick out are hitman Deadshot (Will Smith), and crazy psychiatrist Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie).
The only characters that will be recognisable to many viewers are Batman (Ben Affleck) and the Joker (played with gusto by Jared Leto) – yet their presence seems little more than a set-up for the upcoming solo Batman film.
Only Robbie, as Harley, really enhances her reputation and the film is most enjoyable when she takes centre-stage. Delevingne struggles with her Jekyll and Hyde character.
But, oddest of all, is the fact that a film with such clear adult themes and content is packed with dialogue and jokes that could have been written for children.
artslife@thenational.ae
