Suicide Squad: The Bad Guys Look a Little Too Good

The Squad can't steal superdom back from sad Ben Affleck.

As the saying goes, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become Ben Affleck. Or something to that effect.

The point is, ever since Christopher Nolan made gazillions weighting the Batman franchise with brooding gravitas, comic-book films—those adapted from the DC Universe, anyway—have relentlessly, and often with grave seriousness, pondered the thin separation between heroism and villainy. Following the dismal Batman v Superman with Suicide Squad, DC seemed intent on injecting some Slurpee-colored mischief back into its monochromatic veins and inverting The Dark Knight's thesis statement: When the superest of heroes are gone, and those who remain are portrayed by Affleck, the bad guys start to look mighty good.

Now, more than a decade into an era of popular culture that's obsessed with the concept of the antihero, is the idea of criminal saviors really that novel? Maybe it's the fact that we've become accustomed to protagonists with questionable morals. Maybe it's the film's PG-13 rating. Either way, Suicide Squad hardly makes good on its subversive promise, rushing through an overstuffed, incoherent two hours and pureeing everything into a slush of clichés, albeit one rendered in the garish palette of a Warped Tour merchandise table. It's a movie with too little on its mind, and way too much to do.

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To be fair, writer-director David Ayer is saddled with the unenviable task of introducing a team the size of the Avengers in the span of a single movie. Still, he does himself no favors by sprinting into the plot, such as it exists. With Superman dead, an unscrupulous government agent (Viola Davis) sets out to assemble a rainbow coalition of dirtbags to protect the planet, just in case of an attack from, oh, say, some kind of vengeful, 6,000-year-old Mayan spirit or something. And wouldn't you know it, but there's an almost immediate need for their services.

Exposition is handled up front in a series of brief vignettes, complete with title screens, and glancing flashbacks afterward. Will Smith's Deadshot, a sharpshooting hit man, is the nominal focus, insofar as he's given a young daughter to fret about, which is more backstory than the others are afforded. Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn makes the deepest impression, chewing the scenery (or licking it, rather) with deranged flirtatiousness and a fake Long Island accent that registers a 10 on the Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny Scale. The camera gawks at her short shorts enough to make you wonder if the dude who wrote that lechy Vanity Fair profile did the cinematography. Otherwise, there's a human torch, an Australian boomerang enthusiast and a humanoid crocodile vying with an Army vet, his ninja bodyguard and possessed girlfriend for whatever scraps of story are left over.

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And after all the fanboy handwringing over Jared Leto picking up where Heath Ledger left off as the Joker, he ends up being, at best, a peripheral figure. For the record, Leto's interpretation is part Ledger, part Jim Carrey as the Riddler and part Marilyn Manson circa Mechanical Animals, with a twist of Riff Raff, but he isn't even onscreen enough for the performance to register as either a success or an abomination. It's fine while it lasts.

Once the plot kicks in, the movie becomes a jumble of one-liners and bloodless shootouts set to unending rock block of familiar action-flick jock jams. We get "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Sympathy for the Devil" in the first five minutes, and save for one scene toward the climax, it never slows enough to allow the characters to really interact with each other or for us to revel in their alleged turpitude. Marvel made a whole blockbuster out of Deadpool cracking dick jokes while filleting his enemies. The worst we get in Suicide Squad is Harley Quinn breaking a department store window to steal a handbag. "Don't forget," Deadshot reminds at one point, "we're the bad guys."

Yes, thanks for the heads-up. How about next time, instead of telling us how bad you are, you actually show us?

Critic's Grade: C-

SEE it: Suicide Squad is rated PG-13. It opens Friday at most Portland-area theaters.

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