Suicide Squad (2016) * 1/2

Directed by:  David Ayer

Starring:  Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Viola Davis
Carla Delevingne, Jared Leto

Suicide Squad gives us a plot and people we couldn't care less about.    We don't get a real sense of the action when the fights break out and it inexplicably rains a lot.    It is an ugly film.    I felt worse for the actors who, on top of starring in a slog of a movie, also had to act in a good deal of it soaking wet.     The movie leaves open the possibility of a Suicide Squad 2, but please don't put these actors (and us) through it again.

The movie is based on DC Comics characters and is tied into Batman v. Superman (2016), which is a Best Picture Oscar winner compared to this film.     It seems any comic book character that has ever graced the pages of comic books is having a movie made about him/her.    This strategy also works because the movies make beaucoup bucks at the box office, even if the audience leaves disappointed and sad.    So as long as the marketplace keeps buying tickets, there will be movies based on even the least known comic book characters.  

Aside from The Joker (Leto), who appears in a few scenes here before disappearing for the bulk of the movie, and Batman (cameo by Ben Affleck), I can't say I ever heard of Deadshot (Smith), Harley Quinn (Robbie), Boomerang (Courtney), or any of the other Suicide Squad members.     I wasn't a reader of comic books, true, so maybe this movie wasn't made for me.     With that being said, shouldn't the filmmakers at least make a movie that isn't terrible?  

The first 20 minutes or so of Suicide Squad showcases the characters, who are all either criminals, insane, or both.    Most have extraordinary powers, although while Harley Quinn is hot, I can't say I know what powers she possesses.    A government agent named Amanda Waller (Davis) brainstorms an idea to gather this miscreants up and form an elite team which can deal with the worst situations now that Superman is dead (at least until Justice League arrives in theaters).     One such situation rears its ugly head as a witch named Enchantress (Delevingne), who was under Waller's control, escapes her confinement and unleashes an army of people turned into ugly, nasty, freakish monsters with faces and bodies that look like they are covered in moles and blackheads.    

Enchantress plans to take over the world in a way that isn't explained very well, but it doesn't much matter anyway.    We know she wants to do evil and the Suicide Squad is forced into action under threat of death from Waller and their handler Col. Rick Flag (Kinnaman), who starts out as a hard-ass but we know will soften towards the Squad.     The movie tries desperately to humanize the Squad members, but fails to make us care about them either individually or as a group.    Deadshot is the closest to having any scruples at all.   

I mentioned The Joker earlier and he is Harley Quinn's lover, which is enough evidence to convince us she is truly insane.    She was once a respected psychologist who had the misfortune of having The Joker as a client.    She falls for him and becomes Harley Quinn, with an on-again, off-again Noo Yawk accent and the snuggest pair of short shorts.    Because she is played by Margot Robbie, she is gorgeous, but there isn't much else there.     Her love story with The Joker is unconvincing, mostly because we can't buy this incarnation of the villain once played by Heath Ledger would be a lovelorn Romeo.   

This version of The Joker looks like The Grinch's uglier brother and unlike Ledger (who will forever be the standard by which past and future performances of this character will be based), Leto expends superhuman effort to be creepy and scary.    He is trying too hard to outdo Ledger and it shows.    When he cackles, he isn't doing so to mask deep psychological scars.    It just seems forced.    There were stories that Leto went so deep into character that the other actors claim not to have met the real Leto until well after shooting wrapped.    He shouldn't work so hard next time.

The movie's budget was no doubt high, but it doesn't really translate to the screen.    The various fight scenes are so muddled that we don't know exactly what is happening.     And why all the rain?    Did the filmmakers think the movie needed to be even more depressing than it already was?     Suicide Squad is a movie that needs less atmosphere, less inexplicable action scenes, and pretty much less of everything, including running time.