Mr. Movie: ‘Suicide Squad’ is not the fun you want or expect

Suicide Squad is a DC Comics-based film starring Will Smith as Deadshot, an assassin who has an uncanny prowess with guns of all types. He and other imprisoned supervillain-types are shanghaied by a national security honcho to prevent other supervillains from taking over the world.

Group members include the Joker’s girlfriend Harley Quinn, and an Australian with an ability with boomerangs named — oh, what a surprise — Boomerang. Then there’s the master of fire, El Diablo, and the evolutionary anomaly Killer Croc. Led by Rick Flag, they are charged with defeating Flag’s girlfriend June Moore, who morphs into the powerful witch Enchantress. She and her brother Incubus are building a machine to wipe out humanity.

The plot includes plenty of personality conflicts. They’re packed into way-too-many minutes, which at two hours and 3 minutes, sounds like every other superhero — or in this case — supervillain movie.

Suicide Squad is suicide by movie for some good actors, and for Smith, who used to be an A-list actor. Ironically, it is rumored that Smith bagged the Independence Day sequel to do this one. Although there is more to like in Suicide Squad, both films are bombs.

Other than a wonderfully fun performance from Margot Robbie, who plays Harley Quinn, the movie has no sense of humor. We want to be entertained, not bludgeoned by the same cliche lines and characters we’ve seen in a dozen — heavy sigh! — equally bad superhero films.

Smith is a comedy master but has almost no comedic lines in this film. His best bit, the one you see in the trailers, is cut out. Such a waste of a promising character and an actor who can pull it off. Blame the lame script. Smith — like his fellow cast — has little to do in Suicide Squad.

Four people have played Batman’s nemesis the Joker on TV and in movies. Caesar Romero did it first. Jack Nicholson received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as the crazed felon.

Heath Ledger won an Oscar and other awards for a version of the Joker character. Now another Oscar winner, Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club), gets the call. He’s not very good, but much of that can be blamed on the poorly written script that plagues Smith and the others. Leto grins maniacally and cackles, but not much more.

Viola Davis is one of her generation’s best character actresses. She does the humorless national security adviser Amanda Waller. Her stoic performance is the worst acting she’s ever done. Cardboard has more life.

Speaking of cardboard. Equally wooden is the work of Jay Hernandez (Bad Moms), Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney (the Divergent series), Cara Delevingne, Karen Fukuhara, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Common.

The movie’s only bright spot is Robbie (The Legend of Tarzan). She’s electric and is the film’s only three-dimensional character. It’s almost like she’s in a different movie than her dreary co-stars. This is award-worthy work that will likely be ignored.

That’s unfortunate, because to date, this is the best female performance of the year.

Suicide Squad is written and directed by David Ayer, who wrote Training Day, and wrote and directed Fury, End of Watch and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback movie, Sabotage. With action movies, or intense character studies, Ayer is good. A superhero movie is a different kind of genre, and one he doesn’t seem to understand.

After almost four decades of a superhero movie a year or more, you’d think the producers and Ayer would have learned that the public wants these movies to be fun. This one isn’t.

This story was originally published August 4, 2016 at 12:06 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie: ‘Suicide Squad’ is not the fun you want or expect."