If “Suicide Squad,” which is chapter number-three in the ever-widening DC Universe, survives the withering reviews, that will in large part be thanks to Will Smith, Margot Robbie, the first 45 minutes, and the fact that this is a movie made for men, as opposed to beta-boys and empty-headed feminists like the Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg, whose only hope to find any joy in life is if ObamaCare covers RectumSteelPole-ectomies.
The premise is genius: A “Dirty Dozen” with comic book villains set in a universe where Superman is believed to be dead and Batman is too darned human. With the inevitable incoming threats, America’s going to need meta-humans and their superpowers at its disposal, even if those powers come via some very bad guys and gals. This is where Amanda Waller (an excellent Viola Davis) steps in.
Through various means, not all of them legal, Waller has managed to capture and imprison Deadshot (Smith), a brutally effective assassin; Harley Quinn (Robbie), a psychopath who also happens to be the Joker’s (a terrific if underused Jared Leto) main squeeze; Captain Boomerang (a beefed up Jai Courtney); and a handful of other freaks, misfits, and unpredictable misanthropes.
With her Suicide Squad behind bars and at her mercy, Waller manages to convince the higher-ups in the Department of Defense to go for her plan. Before long our anti-heroes and heroines are sent into action with a team of Navy SEALs led by Col. Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnamon). The mission is to stop an evil witch (Flagg’s possessed girlfriend) from conjuring up a machine that (naturally) will destroy all of humanity.
The first 45 minutes are tremendously entertaining. Writer/director David Ayer delivers pure adrenaline as he introduces the main characters and the gear-up for the aforementioned mission. Unfortunately, from there, except for a few inspired moments, the action is pretty run-of-the-mill. There is no question it is better than the shaky-cammed “Jason Bourne,” a low bar to be sure, but still…
Through these rough spots we are guided by Smith, who is in fine comedic form, and Robbie, who, despite her murderous madness, is sensual and oftentimes hilarious. “Suicide Squad” is not only funnier than the insanely overrated “Guardians of the Galaxy,” it is more stylish to look at and way more sexy.
In her simpering review, Rosenberg writes…
[T]he presence of those [three female leads] in no way prevents it from being a film where Deadshot (Will Smith) impugns his wife as a selfish whore to his young daughter Zoe … and tells June’s boyfriend Rick to give her a spanking … (Deadshot’s idea of equality is to tell Harley that “I will knock you … out. I do not care that you’re a girl.”) … where the worst thing you can say to a man is to compare him to a woman’s genitals or to imply that he lacks a man’s anatomy; where two of the three female characters in the film end up carried out of bad situations by men in classic femme fatale fashion; where you can trace the journey of Harley Quinn’s shorts up her posterior in successive shots of her rear end[.]
…as though it’s a bad thing.
These feminist harpies never fail to ChurchLady men for the sin of acting like men but for some reason love it when women act like these men.
Like the Tracy-Hepburn interplay in last year’s “Jurassic World,” I happen to enjoy “conventional gender stereotypes” and in this fascist age of the Puritan Social Justice Warrior, I find those stereotypes deliciously subversive.
More please.
“Suicide Squad” is no “Dark Knight,” a bit of a mess at times, but a big improvement over “Batman v Superman” and never boring.
That’s good enough for me.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC