Suicide Squad Review: 3 Ups And 7 Downs

5. It Repeatedly Has To Explain The Characters Are "Bad Guys"

Suicide Squad vehemently subscribes to the "tell, don't show" school of filmmaking. Why waste time carefully building character motivations when you can just tell the audience what's going on? As such, not a scene goes by without reiteration of what's going on or a character having to remind another about something crucial and life-threatening, as if the film has an overwhelming lack of confidence in your ability to keep up.

However, that's nothing on the fact the film has to repeatedly reaffirm that these bad guy characters are indeed "bad guys". Someone points it out every five minutes, almost as if DC's accidentally formed a team of neutered anti-heroes and are just pretending they're villains for posterity (funny that). We never really see them be all that bad, so the irreverent hook the whole movie sold itself on is rendered moot. The same is true of the film's Nick Fury, Amanda Waller - she's called "mean lady" and has moments of manic evil, but it all feels so forced.

This speaks of a conflict in what the film's trying to be. On the one hand it really wants to embrace the Suicide Squad idea and go full on crazy, yet has to keep reigning itself back into more standard superhero convention.