SUICIDE SQUAD (D)

Like a delicious looking pie manically shoved in your face or the sly, mid-sniff sting of acid from a phony lapel flower, this once hopeful savior to our sub-par summer of action is a spastically empty, chaotically obnoxious gesture of cinema.  It’s a looks-good-on-paper concept that lacks the balls-of-brass mentality or the keenly creative energy to be a welcomed outside-the-box bad boy.  Flat, forced and flailing to connect at almost every misguided turn (aside from, say, the initial 11-minute set-up), this flick could have possessed the galaxial giddiness of Guardians of the Galaxy or the deviant delightfulness of Deadpool...  Instead, it flops and flounders to find a suitable foothold in overly familiar men-in-tights territory.  So, the moment it stands up and misguidedly exclaims it’s the coolest kid in class is the exact time it becomes precisely not that thing.  It’s a rudderless vessel with nothing particularly interesting to say…  Aside from charismatically playful performances from both Robbie and Smith (and a Scarface-ian, semi-intriguing yet all-too-brief turn from Leto as the green-haired Clown Prince of Chaos), this belligerent bunch of baddies is almost exclusively gaudy eye-gouging style in lieu of sobering substance.  It’s a sloppily hyper-violent, forcefully underwritten, erratically edited and misogynistically mismanaged two-hour music video packed with aimless gunplay and zero tension.  It has roughly the sense of urgency as a snail would searching for salt. The enticing trailer held tons of promise but the proof is ultimately in the puddin’…  Sadly, I think the joke was on us.

Starring: Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Cara Delevingne and Jai Courtney

Directed by: David Ayer (END OF WATCH, FURY and TRAINING DAY)
Rated: PG-13
Running time: 1hr. 40mins.
Story: A group of super-villains who are given a shot at redemption by embarking on a heroic mission that will most likely mean the death of them all…
Website: www.suicidesquad.com