Suicide Squad ... Death by indifference

I WASN'T getting into writer-director David Ayer's (Fury and End of Watch) Suicide Squad. The

characters were cardboard thin and the violence was over the top, probably so that viewers gloss over the film's inadequacies.
   In short, I was indifferent to the wham-bang permeating the film. It's hard to empathise with any character when Ayer introduces them to us in a flurry of disjointed editing that takes way too long. They're supposed to be evil prisoners, the creme de la creme of society's faecal matter, but Ayer presents them as people who have simply slipped of the straight and narrow path.

  You just know what's going to happen when a secret US military agency headed by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) proposes to recruit the worst-of-the-worst prisoners to fight terrorism.
   They may all have been injected with an explosive device to prevent them from escaping, but you know that the possibility of that happening is unlikely.
   That, my friends, is the film in a nutshell. Will they ignore orders to save the world from a sexy swirling spirit wearing a bikini, or will they overcome their selfish desires and fight for the al' mighty United States?
   Waller entrusts US commando Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) to lead the the squad into combat.

Primed for battle. 

Will Smith plays Deadshot, an assassin who never misses a target but also longs to spend time with his 11-year-old daughter, who lives with his ex-wife.
    Then there's Dr Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie of Legend of Tarzan), a former psychiatrist in a mental institution. She's now prone to wearing garish make-up and a supertight T-shirt and Daisy Dukes, and she swings a baseball bat with ferocity, enough to make male prison guards afraid of her.
   Talking about garish make-up, there was a lot of chatter about Jared Leto playing the Joker, but any comparison of him to the late Heath Ledger's Joker is unwarranted and misplaced.
   Leto hardly makes an impression on viewers due to his cackle and limited presence.
  The other members of the squad are Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), fiery and hot tempered El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).
    El Diablo may have regrets about finding it hard to control his fire-throwing ability, and he'll certainly remind viewers of Johnny Storm of Fantastic Four. Another Fantastic Four character that comes to mind is Killer Croc, who's a stand in for The Thing. Flag's lover is archaeologist June Moone, whose body houses an evil spirit called Enchantress.

Viewers may have to burst her bubble. 

   The Suicide Squad is pressed into battle against an evil spirit that first appears in a Gotham City subway. Why a subway? Even the ghostsbusters fought an evil spirit in a subway.
   The finale is your usual destructive battle pitting the squad against the baddies. If you've seen Batman v Superman and Ghostbusters, you know how things will turn out.
  The film, however, does show how a divorce can affect a child and how far a father will go to be with his child. It also puts us into the head of someone who has done something bad to his family because he couldn't control his anger.
  Suicide Squad ultimately flounders because it resembles a pastiche of superhero films that pit good against evil.
   The prisoners are supposed to be detestable but they have to end up on the good side because that's what people associate with the US. The battle scenes that populate the film are nothing new.
 

1 1/2 out of 5 stars
    
    

El Diablo heats up this lame film.