Suicide Squad movie review & film summary (2016)
Besides Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Killer Croc, there’s Jay Hernandez’s heavily-tatted Diablo, who’s been cursed with the ability to create fire; Karen Fukuhara as the masked Katana, who’s deadly with the samurai sword that’s haunted by her slain husband’s spirit; Jai Courtney as Boomerang, an Aussie baddie who does … something with a boomerang; and Adam Beach’s Slipknot, who does … something else.
Oh! I totally forgot about The Joker. That’s because he’s barely in “Suicide Squad,” despite his heavily hyped participation. He’s played by Jared Leto with the green hair, manic smile and homicidal tendencies we’ve come to know in various incarnations of the iconic villain. But he’s more giggly and creepy than truly frightening, and he’s gone for such giant stretches of time that he hardly registers on the film as a whole.
Surprisingly, the usually radiant Robbie doesn’t fare much better as The Joker’s main squeeze and partner in crime. In hot pants and a wicked smile, she has the sexy part down as Harley Quinn. But she never quite sells the crazy, and her heavy New York accent—which helped make her an instant superstar in “The Wolf of Wall Street”—is oddly inconsistent here.
Robbie and Smith get a few opportunities to banter with each other and show the chemistry that made their pairing in the con-artist comedy “Focus” so electric. Smith, of course, can’t help but be one of the most charismatic people on the planet, and so that shines through from time to time, and he also has some nice moments with Shailyn Pierre-Dixon as the daughter he hopes to reunite with once this mission is over. Similarly, Davis brings her usual formidable presence and gravitas to this otherwise unstable affair, and she’s pretty much the only one on-screen who makes the film worth watching.
Part of the problem is that the powers that be within “Suicide Squad” view even their few interesting characters as disposable. If these guys fail, they die. If they bail, they die. The makers of the film itself haven’t given us much reason to care about them, either.
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