I was nowhere close to the target audience for the DC Universe streaming service. But when its programming started showing up on HBO Max, one of my friends started aggressively singing the praises of the show Harley Quinn. The message was received and understood, and yet something did go wrong somehow along the way, because first I ended up watching the movie Suicide Squad.
It isn't as bad as you've probably heard it is. It's far worse.
Oftentimes, this is the point in one of my reviews where I devote a paragraph to a brief plot synopsis of the thing I'm writing about. I'm challenged to do so for Suicide Squad, as it somehow manages the impossible feat of having a plot that's simultaneously so slim that there's nothing to summarize and so incoherent that it's impossible to follow. A government agent recruits "the worst of the worst" villains to become a black ops team... that is dispatched to solve a problem that only exists because the team was recruited in the first place. Along this pointless ouroboros of a journey, things explode, people do bad things because they're villains, and your mind is slowly numbed.
The movie is about two hours long, but feels somehow both longer and shorter at the same time. It's "shorter" in that the first chunk feels like a long clip package reminding you want happened "previously on" some non-existent TV show you've never seen. It's supposed to make you care about the characters, but it's too spastic and unfocused to be effective. And then, once you're actually watching what feels like "this week's episode," it's shocking how long it lasts. You can't believe it isn't over yet.
The people in charge seem to know they've made a bad movie, because they're trying to drench it top to bottom in "needle drops" meant to shortcut you to emotion about what you're watching. Someone backed up the money truck to put The Rolling Stones, Rick James, AC/DC, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Black Sabbath, The White Stripes, Eminem, Queen, and many, many more in one movie. And the 30-second snippet you get of any one of the songs is far more compelling than the movie itself.
The acting is terrible throughout. It shouldn't be possible to make Viola Davis come off bad, but her character's fraction-of-one-note personality is too dull even to be grating. Will Smith displays none of the charisma he's wielded in other movies. Other characters in the titular Squad are quite literally forgettable; one of them (um... spoiler, I guess?) dies along the way, and today I couldn't name them or pick them out of a lineup if a cash prize were riding on it. Then there's Jared Leto, who was reportedly a preening asshole to all his castmates, indulging in the worst excesses of "method acting," just to deliver this weak-ass performance? The one bright spot (to strain the term) is Margot Robbie, who is at times pretty fun as Harley Quinn. I guess it makes sense that she's the focus of the spin-off/sequel movie Birds of Prey.
The actual mystery is how this is getting a do-over movie. I mean, this is just terrible. If James Gunn can pull something good out of this, maybe we should see what he can do about world peace or something.
Is Margot Robbie alone enough to call this movie a D- instead of an F? Maybe. Does it matter? I don't see how. Either way, the movie should be avoided at all costs.
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