Suicide Squad

First is first, let’s give credit where credit is due, you will not find a better film soundtrack. They had some killer songs in it, including some from the Suìcìde Squad album that was released, however some songs were not on that album (like House of the Rising Sun and the original Bohemian Rhapsody). It is a phenomenal soundtrack that I found really brought the essence of it being a comic book to life.

Now for the film, it is over the top, slightly erratic and I love it. The storyline itself is nice and clean, it makes sense, most people know who the villain already is, but if you don’t you should figure it out within the first few minutes of the film. The lack of sensibility by the US government is funny as hell to me, although it may be because I believe they would do something like this in real life. Despite it being a comic book, the motives of the government and Waller (played by Viola Davis) is completely believable even in movie format. That is something that can be shown over the top and is still accurate.

The plot with no spoilers is that the suìcìde squad needs to go into an evacuated city and stop a force that should get them killed. If they disobey orders, they will die. They are working with the US government, a soldier, under orders from Waller to stop this. Their reward if they succeed, ten years shaved off their sentence, if they don’t succeed they are dead.

It is an easy plot to follow, no difficulties there. Especially for anyone who has any info on the squad prior to the trailers. I like the plot, especially since this film is the beginning and we needed something simplistic to explain the characters on screen since this is the beginning of this world and no one who has just watched the films has seen the majority of these characters. If they want to build a franchise off of it (and let’s be honest, this is the goal for most things now a days), they need a starting point.

We get a bit of a background for each of the squad members that are shown to us in the beginning, so if you know nothing about it, you won’t be lost, this film does a good job of explaining things quickly and efficiently.

The video is beautiful, the actual video, the visuals. Beautiful, and there are night scenes, nothing is too dark. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves with films, I want to see what is going on and I had no problem making things out when watching the film even though a number of the scenes take place at night. They definitely made sure that we’d be able to view what was going on. I also had no problems with the special effects either, which this film has a lot of. My biggest problem with the film is some of it is a little choppy (had this problem with season 5 of GoT), some of the scenes they do not have the best transitions.

The sound isn’t perfect to me, but the sound ratio between talking and the music seemed to be fairly levelled out. It is louder, but I don’t have a feeling that it will shake the house down when this comes out on DVD (I’ll correct this line if I’m wrong). It seems like they found a good balance.

The costumes. I liked mostly everything … except Harley’s shorts. I mean I know, we’ve been seeing them for six months, but I cannot stand them. Everything else is pretty neat.

Diablo should definitely not be overlooked, I had major intuition about that guy and it was right. Although something spoiler worthy happens in the film with him that logistically is bothering me.

My favourite character was Harley, Margot Robbie did a fabulous job as Harley Quinn, if you were concerned about that, you had no reason to be. She really delivers and brings to life the character, the only thing she doesn’t have is the high pitched voice which is easy to overlook when you see the child-like emotions that scream Harley Quinn from the eyerolls to the pouts to the excitement. Plus they really made her into something great as anyone who watches this film will see.

Deadshot was awesome too, when Will Smith delivers, he really delivers. This should be known for anyone that’s seen a good Will Smith film, but I had actually forgotten his skills in acting, but it was brought back to me by watching him on this film.

My biggest problems with the film are probably Batfleck (Affleck as Batman) and Jared Leto’s Joker. I think I’ll need another two or three films to get used to Leto Joker because it is so messed. He isn’t really like the regular Joker, there were major MAJOR liberties taken with the character and I’m still not comfortable with it. Leto did an interesting take, but I’m not okay with it … at least not yet, I think I may get used to him. But Affleck as Batman is so wrong! So, so, so, so wrong! Gah! (plus only one person runs out of bullets at any point in the film which is just like “really? really? really?”)

Last Words: This film is campy, it has a few funny parts, it is action packed, fun to follow, slightly erratic, and embraces its comic book glory. The video, the soundtrack all do their part to bring to life a comic book series that people love from DC’s world. It was a film that I was captivated by due to its fun nature, even though it has serious tones. There’s a method to their madness and it was worth watching the film just to experience it from the soundtrack to all the craziness. You can nitpick what you don’t like just like with any other film, but to insult this film is to miss the point of this film entirely. Hopefully this and Deadpool lead the way to have great superhero/villain films that aren’t afraid to have a few laughs.


My rating: Four Tattoo Guns out of Five
Will Buy
Recommended: For a fun light hearted comic crazy night out and for any Harley fan to see her for the first time in live action
-Magz