imperfection is perfection
Sporadic film reviews by a wanna-be filmmaker
SUICIDE SQUAD [2016]
Directed by David Ayer
Written by David Ayer
Starring: Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman
For the first time, I have been anticipating the release of a superhero movie. I love the fact that these aren’t good people. These are super-villains, and it their movie. So I booked myself a midnight opening night ticket, playing on an absurdly big ExiMax screen, and kicked back with a cold one.
The movie certainly starts with some flair and kick. The introduction to the characters is great, backed by a fantastic soundtrack and some wicked dark humour. Finally, one of these superhero movies has made me laugh a ton! Yeah, my sense of humour is twisted, perverted maybe, but hey I found this thing to be hilarious. And the super-villains give this film something that no other superhero film I have seen possessed.
Attitude.
Screw all this PC user-friendly nonsense that these studios excrete consistently. I know I am in the minority here, but this is the first movie of its kind that has excited me, that has grabbed me by the throat and taken me on a ride. Unfortunately though, the ride is far from perfection.
This movie suffers from reported re-shoots. The movie drags in places and it is just as clichéd as every other story they write for these films. But this story takes leaps that the viewer has to put together themselves, and it becomes obvious that many scenes have been removed. It creates a fractured experience; fun and wild, but at the same time, frustrating.
In fact, we see The J-Man for about eight minutes and change. Eight fantastic minutes – Leto has definitely given the character his own personal spin. But for a two hour movie, after all the method-acting, all those bizarre stories, I feel thoroughly ripped off that everyone’s favourite lunatic is basically missing from this movie.
Since we barely see The Joker, Will Smith steps up and delivers as the assassin Deadshot. He has charisma, he is funny, and he convincingly portrays a bad person. Robbie of course delivers, and is on-screen for most of the movie. Smith and Robbie are essentially the two lead characters of the film, and share excellent chemistry. The rest of the cast are great in smaller roles, especially Viola Davis.
But this stellar acting and chemistry is ruined by the fractured experience, and the fact that none of these damned directors or cinematographers can capture a fight scene in these films to give the viewer some sense of who is hitting who! This problem plagues almost all action movies, and it is here in full force: nausea inducing camerawork, no shot lasting for more than a few seconds.
Am I the only one who doesn’t like this method of shooting fight-scenes? Perhaps they need to watch The Raid and have the actors train properly so they can effectively act out the scenes, allowing the cameras to stand back a bit so we can see what is happening.
A fun, darkly humourous comic superhero film? I think this may be the first, and it is easily the best superhero movie I have
ever seen, except for maybe Watchmen. What I love though is that this film has an attitude problem. If only the re-shoots hadn’t occurred, almost removing The Joker from the film entirely… who knows what could have been. Regardless, this is still a fun ride and one well worth checking out on the big screen.
One and a half beers short of a sixer
4.5/6
55 Comments on “SUICIDE SQUAD [2016]”
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imperfection is perfection 
cant wait to see this. nicely done jordan!
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It is great fun mate, but a tad frustrating unfortunately. I cannot believe that there was only eight minutes of the Joker. After all that song and dance, he is barely in the movie!
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Its the tease….
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heh yeah, but i was really looking forward to seeing Leto. He is barely in the movie, i feel cheated. There are guys who were barely in the trailers that have much, much more screen time
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🙂 manipulation of the masses!
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Indeed. I’m sure a sequel will come about, or is already planned. Gotta say, I’ll be watching it!
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Like the rest of us…. 😉
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oh and btw sorry I didn’t get back to you re- the foreign film thing, I had heaps of crap going on at once and it got lost under a ton of other emails.
cheers man, thanks for hosting those blogathons. They are always fun to participate in, I was actually gonna do Force Mageure like you but never got around to re-watching it.
peace my friend
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No prob. Did u get my email the other day about my movies from the Hat 4?
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I think so I’ll have to go re-read it, my memory has been all over the place recently
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😉
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Great review, and glad you enjoyed it. I am looking forward to catching this over the weekend. I love dark humour, I really do.
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If you like dark humour you’ll like this, though I often found that I was the only one laughing sometimes. Its got its flaws and it isn’t brilliant, but for me this is one of the best. I much prefer DC’s darker world than Marvel’s, though I haven’t seen that new Batman movie yet. Might giver it a try. What I really need to try though is Nolan’s Batman films
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I initially wasn’t interested in seeing this in cinema, I was going to wait for it. The first few trailers were okay. Then the last one came, and I got excited. Then I saw that trailer in cinema and knew that I would have to see it on a big screen.
DC always got the darker down, that’s for sure. Still haven’t seen BvS yet either (started the other day, saw the runtime, delayed it). However, I would HIGHLY recommend Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. It’s brilliant, really. Dark, gritty, SMART, definitely worth a watch. I would be interested in hearing your take on them if you ever check them out.
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Hmmm yeah people talk about ledger especially so much, I need to at least watch the first one. I think I’ll do that soon. And I too hope to watch BvS eventually, I think I like the darker atmosphere of DC than the Marvel stuff that I’ve been trying to get into and failing miserably
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Well, if Marvel isn’t working, try DC. Why the Dark Knight trilogy is so good is because it worked at giving you a real movie, with substance, a story, it wasn’t about squeezing in as many explosions and fights and stupid jokes as possible, hence it works so well. I am not a huge Marvel fan. I love the first two Captain America films and I am a big fan of The Punisher movie, but not too blown away by the MCU that they are working right now.
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I love reading that this has dark humor. I too have a perverted/twisted sense of humor so that makes me happy. If this is your favorite superhero movie. Have you not seen Deadpool. That one has a lot of dark humor
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I didn’t like Deadpool, I thought the humour was more x-rated and sex joke based than dark comedy, and the gimmicks wore off for me. This one is wickedly twisted, Robbie has some great lines, plays an insane person so well. Jai Courtney surprisingly is actually really good as Boomerang too, this bearded dude who always has a can of beer in his hand, ha! Will Smith was funny too, and in a much darker way than Marvel films
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YES! This is the first superhero film that I couldn’t wait to see! It’s heavily flawed, but I had a blast watching it. I could pick at it all day, but I’m just not. A 29% on RT is absolutely absurd. Check out my review if you get a chance 🙂
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Oh I shall for sure when I get time later tonight 🙂 I’m looking forward to what you thought, you’re the one who got me excited about this!
27% Pff, people are stupid. That’s my motto. And yeah, the first superhero film I was waiting for too hehe, I think we’re on the same wavelength, especially as we both loved the VVitch
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I just skimmed through your review as I have yet to write mine, Jordan. I was curious what you’d think of it as you didn’t like Deadpool. I think I’d give it more of a 4/6 if I go by your rating, so not as bad as what critics made it to be.
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Yeah 27% is what I heard, just stupid. It is nowhere near that bad, and it is funny as hell. The intro is a blast too. The next one will be great, NEEDS MORE JOKER!! That was its biggest flaw, that and the reshoots
Look forward to reading your take
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Hey Jordan, I have my review up and I talked about the Joker getting such little screentime in this movie. Well, I’m not as fond of this movie as you, but no, not as terrible as what the critics made it to be.
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The critics reception is savage. And it’s all WB fault. Apparently they got trailer company to edit it and reduced Joker scenes because they thought he was too evil. It’s such madness, I talk about it in my post which goes online in about 1h
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Too evil. What. The. Fuck. That is precisely why I hate these movies, they are too PG user friendly bullcrap. Too evil, my god. A testament to how awesome Leto was in the eight fucking minutes he got. He was on FIRE!
Will def be checking your post out later tonight 🙂
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I was so disappointed with The Joker! Not the performance. Not even how little screen time he had. Just how irrelevant to the rest of the story his eight minutes were.
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That’s a good point. He had nothing to do with the story. Since I went on media black-out, I had actually tho ught The J-Man would be a PART of the Suicide Squad. Urrggghh. And I though Leto was so good too
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I’m with you on this one. Had a great time watching it, but there are some serious flaws. The biggest to me being the lack of a good villain for our villains to go up against. Second was the lack of Joker. Finally, you make a great, great point with this: “Perhaps they need to watch The Raid and have the actors train properly so they can effectively act out the scenes, allowing the cameras to stand back a bit so we can see what is happening.” So true…so so true. The Raid…drool.
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THANK YOU!! I’m glad someone agrees with me on that, action scenes are almost always shot horridly, and this was no exception. The Raid though is intense and you rarely miss who is hitting who. And this is because the actors are trained properly and therefore no camera-trickery is needed to make these moves look realistic.
And I totally agree with you, apart from so little of the Joker, the enemy they were up against was lame and just as silly as any other of these super-people movies.
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Well we do have entirely different opinions on this one.. it was a good read!! 😀
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Nice review, Jordan! I’ve re-read it now that I’ve finally seen the move and while it’s clear that you liked it way better than me, we were seemingly bothered by some of the same things. The fighting scenes for example – you definitely aren’t the only one who doesn’t like this way of filming. 🙂
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*now that I’ve finally seen the movie, obviously. I can’t write properly anymore 😀
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Great review Jordan!! I’ve heard so many negatives about this film, nice to embrace the positives too, the intro to the characters and the movie itself sounds pretty great. Such a shame about the lack of Joker though.
Hope you and Brutus are well and very, very excited for next Archway Chronicles piece!!!! 😀 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm’kay
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Mmmkay!
And thank you. I think this film has copped a massively unfair reception. I don’t watch TV, I’m a hermit – I didn’t see any of the PR, so my perspective is different from most people, who have been bashed over the head by the hype machine for ages.
Brutus and I are very well thanks!! Actually, my band-mate suggested we write a song called Brutal Brutus, make it some crazy song about a demonic pitbull. Hahaha yeah that’s the sorta music I play 😉
Stiiiillll transcribing for the next chapter. Its so time-consuming cos I’m not transcribing it all verbatim, I’m altering bits here and there, deleting bits… takes a lot of concentration. I think I’ll take a good break off pot, I reeeeeally wanna get it finished by the end of the year. That is my major goal, apart from my studies and whatnot.
Hope you are well! 🙂
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Great post 🙂 I will be seeing it tomorrow and I am aware of the reviews, but I am hoping it turns out to be good. Anyway, keep up the great work as always 🙂
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Have you seen it yet? What did you think mate?
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Yes I have seen it and I actually loved it 🙂 Keep up the great work as always 🙂
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Awesome! Good to hear someone enjoyed it, I’m kinda over all the bad reviews ripping it apart.
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This is probably the first really positive review I have read of this film.
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I think its been torn apart unfairly. Yeah there is a lot wrong with it, but I still had fun, I laughed a lot, and Will Smith was actually really good. Fuck the critics I say
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It’s refreshing to see a review that goes against the grain.
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Thanks man! What annoys me man is that half the reason for such a negative reaction is due to the massive PR campaign that was behind the movie, hyping it up.
Thing is, I’m a hermit. I don’t watch TV, and if I go to the cinemas I go late so I don’t have to sit through the fuckin’ trailers. So I had fuck-all exposure, had no real expectations and ended up having the time of my life.
PR campaigns can break movies just as often as they can help them. Hail Caesar suffered a similar fate
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You know you may be onto something there Jordan. Sometimes the hype machine can get way too much.
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Indeed, and in this case it has hurt the critical reception in a hard way.
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Great review man! Disappointing to hear that the Joker is in it so less, since he is pretty much the biggest draw. But glad to see some positivity in your review. Most have been pretty brutal. But yours definitely gives me hope. Will be checking it out tomorrow.
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Personally, I think the backlash is due to the PR campaign. It was hyped too much, then the re-shoots came. But apart from the editing and some of the story, I had a blast. It is a proper dark comedy too if that is your sense of humour. A few lines don’t land but for the most part it is funny as hell. I’m sure there were even darker lines cut out from the original.
And yeah, so little Joker was disappointing. But I got over the fact in a few hours, some people seem to take it waaaay too seriously.
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Nice one Jordan! This has been receiving such hideous critique, and I haven’t seen it yet – so it’s nice to read a review where someone somewhat enjoyed the experience!
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The fighting scene, tho! Agree with you. It was all banal and discouraging. I mean, Batman v Superman has at least two jawdropping fighting scene, but this one has none of it.
Glad you liked it, although I didn’t enjoy it as much as you do 😀
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I had a lot of fun. Yeah there are flaws, but I laughed, I never felt bored so the flaws didn’t bother me. And yeah, the fight scenes in this one were just horrible.
The people who made The Raid need to go to Hollywood to teach them how to shoot close-quarters action sequences!
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True! Some hyper-energized fighting scenes would make any action film better, right? We need more like The Raid 😀
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Indeed!! Thing is though, it also falls on the actors. They need to train and learn this stuff, THEN it can be shot properly.
The reason these scenes look so shoddy is often because it is the only way to edit the scene to look realistic, cos the actors can’t really pull that stuff off. And with big-budget films, this is pretty weak IMO
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Hey Jordan, nice review. Well you already know how I feel but I do think attitude is the key word here. My wife and others were much more praiseworthy of it and I think it all comes back to attitude. It just seemed more fun and rebellious than most comic book movies and that made it original enough for them. I liked it but I was also terribly frustrated by it. I had such high hopes.
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Yeah, you nailed it. It was the attitude I loved, and I can’t believe how harsh critics are. But it certainly could have been a lot better. I think they should give us a Harley/Joker movie already!!
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