by Brandon Martin

We live in a world where ordinary people flock to the theaters to get a glimpse of extraordinary. With Suicide Squad, DC’s newest film, hitting the cinemas August 4^th, this trend should continue.

Suicide Squad is the story of a task force full of criminals put together by the government to try to do some good in a world filled with the dangers of meta-human behavior.

With a cast featuring Will Smith, Viola Davis, Margot Robbie, and Jared Leto, the “Squad” certainly possess star power.  Leading up to the movie’s release, many film critics gave the movie negative reviews. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the hate, I do have to agree the movie was a letdown.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Ever since it was announced, I was hyped for this movie and quite honestly, it let me down. The acting wasn’t an issue at all.

Will Smith, who played Deadshot, was fantastic. His character was the MVP of the movie. His portrayal of a villain who still has a heart was spot on and I can’t imagine anyone else playing Deadshot. I hope it leads to a solo film in the future.

A lot of the talk pre-movie was about Margot Robbie who played Harley Quinn. Harley, known to most as the Joker’s mistress, is a tough crazed lunatic and Robbie nailed that role. Most of the talk about her character will be about her skimpy outfit and overall beauty but don’t let her looks take away from her acting skills as she was an overall bright spot of the movie.

When the first look of the movie came out, everyone was excited for The Joker, portrayed by Jared Leto, and rightfully so after Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight, The Joker became everyone’s favorite bad guy and wondered if Jared Leto could live up to that bar set by Ledger.

Quite honestly, I couldn’t tell you. If you are going to this movie just to see The Joker, you will leave disappointed. That’s because The Joker has very little screen time, as in probably 5-7 minutes worth. So all this hype surrounding one character was kind of worthless, and it turns out he was even the film’s antagonist. If anything he was a side character, luckily for the fans of the clown prince at the end of the movie he busts his love, Harley, out of Belle Reve setting up for a potential second film or side movie.

Like I mentioned above, the acting wasn’t the bad part of the movie. It was almost everything else. I found the plot of the movie to be sporadic.

There were several random cuts between reality and flashbacks that were not needed in the moment. I struggled to find myself interested throughout the entire film due to the fact as soon as something exciting happened, it was immediately followed by a scene in an office or a soppy flashback of one of the character’s pasts.

Another weak element of the movie was the films foe, Enchantress. While I don’t want to spoil too much of the movie, her rise to power had me asking myself why didn’t she do that earlier. If she had this power why did she conveniently not take advantage of it until Task Force X was assembled?  Deus Ex Machina!

Another thing I didn’t like about the movie was it’s score. While, it possessed some really good songs, it didn’t fit the mood or timing most of the time and at points, the singing of the song distracted from the dialogue. I felt it needed more instrumental music to add to it.

Now with all that said, I don’t want you to think I hated this movie. I didn’t. I enjoyed it a lot as will any fan of comic books. It had good action and humor and introduced a plethora of new characters into the DC Movie Universe that we may see again.

We got to see Batman in it both as the Dark Knight and as Bruce Wayne and got to see our first bit of The Flash in it too. What I’m trying to get at is that this review shouldn’t stop you from going to this movie, in fact, I still recommend this movie to everyone.

I believe you will find this movie highly more enjoyable if you lower your expectations. This movie isn’t going to beat The Dark Knight Rises or any of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films but trust me, I’ve seen much worse comic films (sorry Hal Jordan).

From Deadshot to Harley Quinn to the poor workers who have to repair the city, I’d give this movie a 5.5/10