Suicide Squad (2016)

Last night I saw the movie Suicide Squad. Despite all the negative ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm glad I decided to ignore the hype and see the movie, myself. I really enjoyed the movie.

From a technical standpoint, Batman v. Superman was a better-edited movie than Suicide Squad, but that's really the only beef I had with the movie. Director David Ayer had to cram a lot of exposition into the first 30 minutes of the movie in order to set up each character for the audience; otherwise the average fan would have virtually no idea who any of them were. The die-hard DC fans would pick everybody out almost instantly, but the rest of us would have been clueless.

Being more of a Marvel fan that DC fan over the years, I was only casually familiar with a few characters besides Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn. I was able to pick out Captain Boomerang as a for of the Flash (who had a short cameo in the movie) and Deadshot from the Batman: Arkham games, and I recognized Viola Davis' Amanda Waller character, but overall, I was pretty much learning about the rest of the cast of characters for the first time. Mr. Ayer did a pretty good job essentially setting up the origin story of everybody within the first half hour without the pace getting too slow.

I loved Jared Leto's take on the Joker. I felt he the best of all the previous Jokers, especially Cesar Romero's Joker from Batman '66 and Mark Hamill's Joker from the animated series and video games. He definitely played the part of a homicidal maniac quite well, and in a real-life setting, I would have been far more scared of Leto's Joker than Heath Ledger's Joker from the Christopher Nolan films.

Will Smith was, without a doubt, the lead character in the film. I really enjoyed his take on the Deadshot character. He played the part with a commanding presence, despite the fact that he wasn't the leader of the team; Joel Kinnaman's Col. Rick Flag was. Mr. Smith was able to portray the part of a gun-for-hire with the dimension and turmoil of a doting father who didn't want to be taken away from his loving daughter.

My favorite character in the film, by far, was Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. Harley stole the show in every scene she was in. She offered realistic and believable take on a cartoon character who is normally over-the-top comical and extremely exaggerated in her every move and word in the animated series. Ms. Robbie's Harley came off as an extremely beautiful and extremely dangerous femme fatale that I would fall in love with in a heartbeat, even if I knew she could kill me at any moment. The only person in the world who could possibly capture her heart was the Joker, for sure.

The dynamic between the Joker and Harley in this movie was quite moving for me. Despite being crazed, murderous criminals, you could tell these two genuinely loved each other, and Joker would do anything for this woman, and vice versa. I just wish these two could have been given more screen time together.

Leto's Joker didn't get nearly as much screen time as the trailers made it look like he would. He a grand total of 7 minutes in the movie, but the scenes in which he appeared were pretty powerful. I heard that there had been more scenes with the Joker shot for the movie, but they had to cut most of them out in order to meet the total screen time of 2 hours and 10 minutes. Here's hoping there's an extended cut like there was in Batman v. Superman.