‘Suicide Squad’ doesn’t live up to the hype

Earlier this year, when the expertly crafted trailer for “Suicide Squad” was released (with precision editing to the tune of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”), tongues began to wag that always-the-bridesmaid comic studio DC finally had a potentially engaging film on its hands after a string of disappointments (Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy notwithstanding).

As Marvel seemed to crank out solid work for the better part of the last decade, DC has been stuck with the misguided “Watchmen,” “Jonah Hex,” “Green Lantern,” and “Man of Steel.” Then, only a few months ago, the highly anticipated “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was rightfully savaged and rejected by even its most die-hard fans. All eyes turned to “Suicide Squad for an end-of-the-summer Hail Mary pass from the studio. 

And it would be unfair to call “Suicide Squad” a fumble, since it feels as though it never even left the locker room to play the game. 

This disposable rogues’ gallery was supposed to be an irreverent departure from the more furrowed-brow seriousness of some of the other recent offerings (sort of like a “Guardians of the Galaxy” with a longer rap sheet). And despite a promising start, the film spends almost the first half hour chopping up backstories into digestible nuggets for us to consume, but there’s not nearly enough to make us care about a single one of them.

Seemingly mere moments after “BvS,” government official Amanda Waller (played by Viola Davis, the only actor who truly deserves her own spinoff film) recommends that assembling a group of super-powered humans to stop the next Superman from getting out of control would be a peachy idea. Given the high risk of mortality on such a mission, Waller has taken the initiative of cobbling together and unleashing some of the more notorious meta-humans from prison, because if things go south...no big loss.

We are then provided a table-setting sequence for each character nominated for this mission, in an attempt to “humanize” them. There’s assassin Deadshot (played by Will Smith), doctor-turned-psycho Harley Quinn (played by Margot Robbie), firestarter El Diablo (played by Jay Hernandez), petty thief Captain Boomerang (played by Jai Courtney), mutant Killer Croc (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and centuries-old witch Enchantress (played by Cara Delevingne). There’s also another member who fails to get the same introduction, joins the team for about five minutes and is killed off (sorry, spoiler alert!). 

But it’s that kind of lazy, awkward construction that is “Squad’s” undoing. For example, once they are all freed to carry out the mission, which, coincidentally, is to undo the mistake of allowing one of these meta-humans free (the military’s answer? “Well, that didn’t work out well, but maybe if we let out a whole bunch of them…”). And while they are supposed to represent the most nihilistic, ruthless criminals we have on the planet, they seem to form a family rather quickly and speak of sacrificing for one another. 

Additionally, to add familiarity to the rather no-name comic characters, we are given the Joker (played by Jared Leto) who circles the film’s stratosphere for all of about three minutes total, which is actually a blessing, as Leto’s take is rather weak at best. 

The climactic final battle is yet another one in which our “heroes” take on an army of CGI-rendered mutants (though we have the bonus of them being commanded by a dancing witch, who looks about as threatening as a Grace Jones music video), which is filmed with such a “Batman v Superman” tint that you cannot really make heads-or-mutant-tails out of it. 

The result is ultimately a jumbled, toothless mess. Because we are never really given reason to care about the stakes for any of these characters, they are about as threatening as a group of Comic Con cosplayers with a budget.