Review: Suicide Squad

[Editor’s Note: This review may seem jumbled and disjointed, but it’s at least 1,000 times more coherent than the plot of the Suicide Squad.]

Will Smith is mad, Harley’s crazy. They both have theme music. Amanda Waller has theme music, too. It’s “Sympathy for the Devil,” which makes sense. Seems like this is the Amanda Waller who can kill Superman with a memo from the comics. That’s cool. She’s in a meeting explaining Team X (which won’t be the Suicide Squad until Will Smith names it that later), and giving background information in the form of flashbacks about the main bad guys she wants on the team. Each flashback has its own theme music, because everything in this movie has theme music except for the scenes where most film makers would put theme music. Those just have a bunch of gunfire. I bet the music rights of this movie cost more than they paid the dude playing Killer Croc (who should have been King Shark anyway, dammit). I’m not going to bother listing the rest of the characters because Harley Quinn, Will Smith, and Military Enchantress Boyfriend Dude (who you’ll meet soon) are the only three who aren’t basically well-paid extras. I guess they figured it would be weird to call three people a Squad, so they added Killer Croc (who is not even remotely King Shark) and all those other people to make the group seem more squad-like.

After all the flashbacks, Amanda Waller goes to another meeting to introduce the last two members of Suicide Squad and show the military guys that the Enchantress is really really powerful and they have her heart so she has to do what they say and that also keeps her boyfriend, the leader of the future Suicide Squad, in line. Even though he’s a loyal military guy and not a villain at all. So why do they need to keep him in line? Anyway, his name is Military Enchantress Boyfriend Dude or something. Also, why does The Joker talk like Humphrey Bogart with a mouth full of used condoms? It seems kind of dumb, but at least Margot Robbie seems like she’d make a good Harley Quinn if anybody ever did a movie with Harley Quinn as a character. Wait, is this Harley’s theme song too? Does she have two theme songs? Maybe it’s Common’s theme song, or the Joker’s. I don’t know, but I hope they consider Margot Robbie if they ever do a Harley Quinn movie, I think she’d be good. Batman’s there, too, but I have a feeling it’s only Ben Affleck in the scenes where you’d definitely notice if it wasn’t Ben Affleck.  I don’t think Batman had a theme song, probably because they could either afford  a theme song or Affleck and they figured people would get mad if they didn’t get Affleck. Weird as it sounds, Ben Affleck as Batman is pretty much the high point of the DC cinematic universe so far. I hope Wonder Woman manages to rise above the suck.

Hey, it’s more scenes! And more theme music! Enchantress went away despite Amanda Waller having her heart and woke up her brother and I guess they’re the villains or something. Will Smith can sure shoot good. The Joker’s trying to break Harley out of jail, so maybe he’s the villain or something. Nope, they’re all going to Midway City. Since that’s where the Enchantress done R-U-N-N-O-F-T, I guess she’s the villain or something. Amanda Waller can kill them by detonating a bomb in their necks if they don’t do their mission, so they better do their mission. Military Enchantress Boyfriend Dude can kill them, too, I think. Hey, here’s two more members of the team that didn’t get flashbacks and theme music before. One’s Katana, who’s not a prisoner so I guess that’s why she wasn’t introduced earlier. She’s just like an intern or something. The other guy’s some dude named Slipknot that I don’t remember ever seeing in a DC comic. I bet his head’s gonna explode soon to show that Amanda Waller’s neck bombs are for real, because I’m pretty sure they made him up just for the movie and he’s not played by anyone I recognize. Also, his name is Slipknot.

Anyway, now they’re in Midway City, fighting these guys who look like they’re covered in bubble wrap that’s been painted black. They do that for a while while the director dedicates most of his energy to making sure Margot Robbie’s ass gets as much screen time as possible. I’m pretty sure it’s in a few scenes that Harley Quinn doesn’t actually appear in. Somewhere along the line we find out that Enchantress is making the bubble wrap people, but by that point I’d forgotten that Enchantress was in this movie. Will Smith tries to play that Will Smith character we liked in all those movies, but he’s fighting against a pretty strong current of raw sewage. As Margot Robbie’s agent negotiates to make sure that that his client gets higher billing than her own ass, the Suicide Squad (Will Smith has named them by now) gets to a building, which is where they were going, maybe? Is it where Enchantress is? It doesn’t really seem to have enough glowing magical stuff going on to be where Enchantress is, but maybe the glowing stuff is on the other side of the building and there’s a curtain between them or something. Oh, yeah, and Slipknot’s no longer with them because somewhere during the fight with the bubble people he tried to run away and got his head exploded. Captain Boomerang managed to stay alive though, so he’s still around. Did you know Captain Boomerang is in this movie? He is.

Occasionally there are scenes that try to make the bad guys sympathetic, because the 700 chickens randomly pecking computer keys who wrote the script missed the memo that since the Suicide Squad is made up of villains, they don’t have to be sympathetic, just entertaining. You know, like Hans Gruber or the Sheriff of Nottingham or that dude in Quigley Down Under. Man I miss Alan Rickman. Anyway, they go into the building and Enchantress isn’t there, but Amanda Waller is, so I guess they were there to rescue her?

When did Amanda Waller end up in Midway City in need of rescue? Did they tell us that? I don’t remember them telling us that. Holy shit! Did Amanda Waller just murder a bunch of civil servants? Well, shit. Amanda Waller was one of the things you chickens were doing right and then you went and jumped the shark on her, too. Obviously that was a normal shark that got jumped, not King Shark, because why would you have KING SHARK when you could have Killer Croc? You know, unless you were a reasonable human and not a chicken, that is. Dammit, Chickens! Amanda Waller is a badass who knows how to screw over everyone, but she’s not a sociopath. The sociopaths are all those people you’ve been trying to make seem sympathetic at random points throughout this movie. This is what happens when you hire chickens to do a monkey’s job.

So with Amanda Waller safe and all those innocent civilian intelligence employees dead, the team gets ready and load up in the helicopters and…go home? Are they going home? Aren’t they going to stop Enchantress? I’m pretty sure Enchantress is in this movie, and I’ve got a feeling she might be the villain or something. Shouldn’t you maybe do something about that, Suicide Squad? Oh, never mind, the Joker’s here. Great. This asshole. Just what I wanted. Harley makes a break for it and Amanda Waller tries to blow her up, but apparently Joker’s disabled her neck bomb. As Harley dangles from the helicopter (the one the Joker’s in, not the one everybody else was going to get into), Amanda Waller offers Will Smith some money to shoot her. Does this mean Will Smith’s neck bomb isn’t working any more, either? Anyway, he misses on purpose because…reasons?…and the people get on helicopters and bunch of helicopters crash and Harley ends up back with the group and Amanda Waller gets captured by Enchantress, who it turns out is in this movie after all.

Since the neck bombs don’t work anymore, I guess(?), Will Smith and the rest of the team (even Katana) decide to quit and go drink once they find out that Enchantress is in the movie because…reasons? As they Suicide Squad sits around a bar listening to the extended backstory of one the characters nobody really cares about and considering exactly what they’re going to say when they fire their agents, Military Enchantress Boyfriend Dude shows up because he can’t beat Enchantress and save Amanda Waller (who’s starting to turn into Lois Lane for some reason) without them. MEBD gives Will Smith a bunch of letters from his daughter, which implies that (1) MEBD knew that the letters weren’t getting to Will Smith and (2) MEBD brought them along specifically because he thought he could use them to manipulate Will Smith if the neck bomb thing failed. Which seems like at least two dick moves.  Seeing the letters makes Will Smith decide to help MEBD because…reasons? Everyone else decides to tag along, also because reasons.

Now MEBD tells everyone his plan that he desperately needed the Suicide Squad to pull off: the nameless military guys will do everything, even the things that it seems like members of the Suicide Squad would be perfect at doing. The Suicide Squad will tag along, I guess for moral support. Anyway, they end up killing Enchantress or something, and probably her brother too (to be honest, I was just hoping for it to end at that point and wasn’t paying much attention) and then Amanda Waller shows back up and threatens to blow up their heads because I guess the neck bombs work again because…reasons? So they all laugh and crack jokes and go back to jail and Harley gets and expresso machine and Will Smith gets to see his daughter and Joker breaks Harley out and Amanda Waller meets with Batman and actually I’m kind of glad King Shark’s good name didn’t get dragged into this mess.

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