The only thing that gave me hope was the fact that David Ayer (Fury, Training Day) was writing and directing it, and if you look at his history, you’ll see that he really hasn’t made a bad film to this point of his career. I was also excited about the fact that Will Smith finally stepped out of his comfort zone and decided to play a bad guy for once. I mean, I’m clearly not counting the times when he decided to be a bad person in real life and forced me to see atrocities like After Earth and Focus; I’ll be nice and just let those two slide. Oh and I can’t forget the fact that I was going to see Margot Robbie run around screen for 2 hours wearing pigtails and a naughty school girl outfit. Every comic book nerd out there has been raising the stocks of Kleenex and Lubriderm for the past six months over that one.
So as I sat there front row Joe style with some old fat moron kicking my chair on purpose because I sat in front of him in a sold out theater (I mean how dare I right?), I really hoped that this wouldn’t be this year’s version of the awful Fantastic Four. Please please for the love of all that is right in this world, just be somewhat entertaining. And I’m happy to say that it actually was! Don’t get me wrong, this film is silly as hell but the good thing is, it never pretends to be anything but. Well there is this one scene where the evil squad randomly goes into a bar and starts to talk about their feelings but that was thankfully just a momentary lapse in judgement on Ayer’s part. He soon returns to his typical dark storytelling the second Will Smith "Cowboys the f&* up" and walks out of the bar to make everything right again.
The premise of the movie is simple enough; the overly ambitious and borderline evil secret ops director Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) decides to put together a team of meta-humans to help combat the next threat to humanity. She feels the world got lucky with the fact that Superman chose to be a kind super human but what if the next one that comes along decides to go an alternate route? Waller eventually gets approval to do so when she convinces the board that she can control the most powerful of the meta-humans in Enchantress by holding the key to her actual heart. She believes this will keep her in line; well that and the fact that the head of her task force Rick Flag (Kinnaman) is in love with the girl she has possessed (June Moone); so he will do whatever it takes to protect her. She’s also able to convince this crazy team of criminals to work for her by promising clemency in return. And they all sort of reluctantly agree while each having their own secret plan of escape in place.
Well they are all called into action one day after the Enchantress somehow escapes and releases the power and presence of her brother in the process. She then unleashes her evil plan to destroy all of the world’s armies so that she and her brother can once again rule supreme. So it’s up to the Suicide Squad to find her and stop her before she succeeds.
The story itself isn’t bad, it’s just that if you don’t go in with the right mindset, there are a few things in its presentation that will throw you off. For instance, the fact that Ayer decided to make Diablo a South Central cholo for some strange reason or the fact that Killer Croc is seemingly the secret cousin (not the one he’s having sex with btw) of Louisiana rapper Kevin Gates. Croc refers to women as Shorty and all he wants in his cell is BET so he can watch BET After Dark; presumably so he can masturbate to Nelly’s Tip Drill but that’s just my own personal opinion. None of this however will bother you if you go in realizing that this film is completely self aware; I mean one of the meta-humans superpower is that he can throw a boomerang really well. Seriously?
The highlights of the film are clearly Will Smith and Margot Robbie. If you ignore the fact that he dresses like 1970’s Shaft when he’s not in costume, Deadshot has some of the film’s best one liners and of course some of the film’s best action shots. After he decides to finally step up and take out an entire squadron of the evil army the Enchantress has built, one dude in the theater screamed " that’s my man!" as everyone laughed and cheered in agreement. And while Jared Leto did a decent job of playing a super street version of the Joker, Robbie played an even better version of his character in my opinion. She was sexy, smart, crazy, and probably the funniest part of the film. And while she was head over heels for her boyfriend (Joker) she never quite resorted to being the typical needy or whiny character that most female leads tend to do (and sadly not by choice) these days. She definitely held her own amongst her male counterparts and every time these two were on screen they definitely stole the show.
Don’t go in expecting to see a different version of The Dark Knight, instead set your mind to see an updated take on the first Blade movie and you’ll walk out a happy person. I rate this movie as FRESH!
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