Antihero flick takes genre to new lows
Print Edition
THE superhero movie is at a strange crossroads. It generally either takes itself too seriously (“Man of Steel,” “Batman v Superman”) or delights in not caring a bit (“Deadpool”). The choice, dear moviegoer, is yours. Do you prefer your costumed heroes to brood or break bad?
Right now, good is out; self-proclaimed “edginess” is in.
Riding the trend is David Ayer’s day-glo superhero circus “Suicide Squad,” a gleefully nihilistic, abysmally messy romp that delights in upending the genre’s conventions and tries desperately to blow your mind with its outre freak show. It’s less of a movie than a long trailer that doesn’t provoke as much as it thinks it does.
Despite the train wreck of “Batman v Superman” (the last DC Comics challenge to Marvel’s dominance), excitement is high for “Suicide Squad” thanks to a marketing campaign that rivals the presidential ones and the promise of some punk in the poppy, PG-13 realm of the superhero movie.
But the nastiness of “Suicide Squad” is superficial, merely fetishized gestures of ultra-violence that will impress few beyond 13-year-old boys. Based on the comic created by John Ostrander, the film is a cartoonish yet grim “Magnificent Seven” in which a desperate government turns to a handful of villains, locked away in prison cells, to combat a yet greater supervillain running amok.
There’s Will Smith’s sniper-for-hire father Deadshot, Margot Robbie’s psycho-in-pigtails Harley Quinn, Jay Hernandez’s fire-breathing gang member El Diablo, and others. They’re a gruesome bunch, reluctant to fight anyone else’s battle, but forced to when the program’s leader (the imposing Viola Davis, the film’s steely backbone) implants an explosive device inside them. They bond in conversation over whether they’ve killed kids or not. Lovely stuff, really.
The standout is Robbie’s Harley Quinn, the most dynamic presence of the bunch: a clown cocktail of mental disorder and cheerleader pep. Robbie pulls it off, but Ayer spoils the movie’s breakout character by continually reducing her to eye candy.
Quinn is the demented girlfriend of the on-the-loose Joker (Jared Leto), who turns out to be a curiously small part of the film. That, however, proves to be a relief. Leto, working in the sizable wake of Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, proves a massive disappointment in the role, lacking in both menace and wit.
The film, as a whole, is missing the humor and spryness that was promised. Its best laughs are unintentional (all I’ll say is that there are souls trapped in swords) and the charisma of Smith and Robbie are drowned out in a turgid tale.
In “Suicide Squad,” Ayer questions whether a killer can be a hero and vice versa, even equating psychopaths with elite soldiers. He would like to vanquish the triumphant superhero and reorder the comic universe for more complicated times. But the only thing he may have killed is the comic-book adaption.
Watching “Suicide Squad” is to see the superhero movie reaching rock bottom, sunk by moral rot and hollow bombast.
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