Suicide Squad reviews: Will Smith’s ‘disastrous’ new movie gets a mauling from critics

Suicide Squad reviews: Will Smith’s ‘disastrous’ new movie gets a mauling from critics

Suicide Squad has, and it pains us to write this, been panned by critics.
Despite Jared Leto going horrifyingly method to get into his role as The Joker, it hasn’t completely paid off.
The film sees CIA agent Amanda Waller assemble a team of villains to take on a life-threatening mission to protect the city following the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice.
Official reviews were released on Tuesday night, and ‘disastrous’, ‘flat’ and ‘boring’ are just some of the words being used to describe director David Ayer’s latest.
Some running themes in a lot of the write-ups include a disappointing lack of the Joker, the ‘sexist’ portrayal of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and the fact that the baddies (both the ones we’re meant to support and the ones we aren’t) are naff.
Vanity Fair‘s review was probably the harshest, saying: ‘Suicide Squad is bad. Not fun bad. Not redeemable bad. Not the kind of bad that is the unfortunate result of artists honorably striving for something ambitious and falling short. Suicide Squad is just bad.

‘It’s ugly and boring, a toxic combination that means the film’s highly fetishised violence doesn’t even have the exciting tingle of the wicked or the taboo.’
Digital Spy called it ‘probably the best of the new DC Universe films’, but added ‘it’s still not very good. Big shame.’

It continued: ‘The most unforgivable thing about a film which promised us so much anarchy is that it’s boring and unfunny. The short interlude when the Squad go down the pub almost comes as a relief.’
What the critics are saying about Suicide Squad
The Hollywood Reporter
‘A puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is, Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains and then doesn’t know what to do with them.’
Variety
‘Like Deadpool earlier this year, it’s entertaining insofar as it allows the characters to crack wise and act out, though they can only go so far within the confines of MPAA guidelines and the rigid DC mythology. On paper, this could have been the antidote to an increasingly codified strain of comic-book movies, but in the end, it’s just another high-attitude version of the same.’

Vanity Fair
‘It’s simply a dull chore steeped in flaccid machismo, a shapeless, poorly edited trudge that adds some mildly appalling sexism and even a soupçon of racism to its abundant, hideously timed gun worship. But, perhaps worst of all, Suicide Squad is ultimately too shoddy and forgettable to even register as revolting. At least revolting would have been something.’
Buzzfeed
‘Suicide Squad is a movie about criminals and miscreants that makes surface gestures toward upsetting superheroic expectations, but that turns out to be thuddingly retrograde in its choices. Its characters are supposedly hardened, selfish outcasts who nevertheless declare themselves family faster than a bunch of tenderhearted fourth-graders at summer camp. Its plot is maddeningly circular, with the Suicide Squad getting activated to fight a frustratingly silly-looking antagonist who wouldn’t be around if someone hadn’t tried to put together the Suicide Squad.’
The Independent
‘The villains speak with absurdly amplified voices. There are a lot of electric effects and scenes of characters and buildings being consumed by fire. By the final reel, the Suicide Squad members are behaving little differently than any other super-heroes. This surely defeats the entire point of the movie, which is that they are supposed to be bad guys who are doing good only under the most extreme sufferance.’
Suicide Squad gets savagely mauled by critics 'disastrous' 'hideously timed gun worship' 'shambles'
The Telegraph
‘When you compare Suicide Squad to what James Gunn and Marvel Studios achieved in Guardians of the Galaxy – low-profile property, oddball characters, make-it-fun brief – the film makes you cringe so hard your teeth come loose. But it’s a slog even on its own crushingly puerile terms.’
Indiewire
‘Suicide Squad promises to flip the script on superhero movies by forcing the audience to root for the bad guys. Alas, that wild and crazy idea is the only thing that separates this dank sewer of messy actions beats and misplaced machismo from any of the other films that have come to define its genre.’
Beaumont Enterprise
‘The nastiness of Suicide Squad is superficial, merely fetishised gestures of ultra-violence that will impress few beyond 13-year-old boys. (Sorry, that’s unkind to 13-year-old boys.)
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 Ayer’s turgid tale.’
As ever, it’s best to see the film for yourself and make up your own mind, but it’s not looking good is it?
Director Ayer has spoken out in defence of the film in the face of the bad reviews, saying he made it ‘for the fans’.
Ayer tweeted a quote by revolutionary Emiliano Zapata which roughly translates to: ‘I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.’
He added: ‘Zapata quote is my way of saying I love the movie and believe in it. Made it for the fans. Best experience of my life.’