SHOULD I TAKE THE KIDS - Suicide Squad

THE DETAILS:

Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 123 minutes
Genre: Action
In Theaters: August 5, 2016
Starring: Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney
Screenwriter: David Ayer
Director: David Ayer

THE PLOT:

With the recent appearance of multiple superheroes, the government decides to take steps to defend themselves against these new super-powered threats. Amanda Waller heads a secret operation known as Task Force X, a team comprised of captured super villains forced into taking on dangerous missions in exchange for time off their prison sentences. The team consists of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, El Diablo, Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc and Slipknot. When a being known as Enchantress assaults a city with her doomsday machine, the team is mobilized under the guidance of soldier Rick Flag. With bombs in their necks, Task Force X is forced to carry out Flag’s orders or receive an explosive detonation. And they have their work cut out for them with an army of magical zombies and a crazed Joker running around the city.

CONTENT:

There’s plenty of violence to be had in Suicide Squad, but it’s mostly kept bloodless. The team takes down an army of magical beings that are shot up and diced without much of any visible blood. Limbs are hacked off of CGI creatures. Characters are tossed around and beat up by fists, explosions or magic. One character loses his head in an explosion. A villain has the power to incinerate enemies by the dozen. A tragic backstory finds one of the villains accidentally murdering their wife and children. Harley Quinn spends most of the movie in a skimpy outfit and attempts to sexually come on to several characters. The Joker refers to his crotch while he offers up Harley to a gangster. There’s a high level of profanity, the most frequent curse being Harley Quinn constantly calling people “p*ssies.” The main characters take a break at a bar to have some hard drinks.


SHOULD I TAKE THE KIDS:

NO: 11 and Under
The amount of violence, sexual tension and profanity will be too much for the kids to handle. They may also be confused as to why the bad guys are the protagonists and whom they should be rooting for.

YES: 12 and up
Older kids and teenagers will be able to handle Suicide Squad’s more adult content of villains being nasty and violent with dark silliness and questionable morals.

Photo: Warner Bros.

REVIEW:

David Ayer’s Suicide Squad is a dirty, gritty and strangely colorful take on the villains of DC Comics that manages to avoid some of the pitfalls from Batman v. Superman, but still stumbles into a few familiar problems. Once again, this is another superhero movie that bites off far more than it can chew. For the first twenty minutes or so, we’re introduced to the members of Task Force X; some are given lengthy introductions with special credits while others simply show up at the last minute without much of a welcome. With so much time spent explaining these characters and what makes them so bad, most of their subplots and motivations become lost amid a tired scenario of beating the big bad with a big blue laser shooting into the sky.

The movie is saved from being a total disaster by the characters who, when they’re not trying so hard to remind us that they’re villains, have some decent characterizations and chemistry. Once the movie gets over its multitude of backstories and artificial one-liners, the talents of Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Jared Leto do have their bright spots. Will Smith’s Deadshot is likable enough as the dad trying to reform his ways and Margot Robbie slowly grew on me as the overly bubbly Harley Quinn. For the brief screen time Leto receives as the Joker, he never wastes it with a unique performance in a movie that doesn’t have time for him. And while Ayer’s frenetic pacing becomes very scattershot at times – leaving many plot holes and abandoned arcs – he does bring his own unique style to a genre that could use more flavor. It’s not every superhero movie where you see a dirty dozen team fight magical zombies with boomerangs and baseball bats.

OVERALL:

Suicide Squad is a dizzying mess of bullets and backstories, held together by its visual style and performances.

GRADE: C+

COMPANION FILMS (for viewing with the kids at home):

The direct-to-video animated movie Batman: Assault on Arkham serves as a more violent, adult, trimmed down and giddy depiction of Task Force X in comparison to Ayer’s Suicide Squad.


Mark McPherson has been writing about movies since 2010 for various websites and is the author of The Great Animated Movies. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Media Arts and Animation and lives in Minnesota. You can learn more about Mark by visiting his professional website Madness Mark.