Suicide Squad Review: 3 Ups And 7 Downs

3. It's Edited To Sh*t

Part of the previous points is down to the poor screenplay, although just as much to blame is the editing. As I said in my full review, the ultimate effect is not dissimilar to Batman V Superman (random plotting with no real structure where things happen because the movie simply demands it), although while there it was parsing down a four hour movie into two-and-a-half, with Suicide Squad it seems to be a case of attempting to stitch together something from nothing (or at least very little).

Scenes change to just about anything at random (Harley Quinn's flashback origin is this film's Knightmare), with characters across the US and turning up where they have no right to be. Regular shot-to-shot continuity is even worse; it's shocking the amount of cuts that don't match up, with characters in completely different positions and entire groups moving across the room. It's annoying in dialogue scenes, and kind of exhausting in action sequences, where things happen independently and you have to kind of just accept the onslaught.

What really struck me was how there's multiple plot points that are clearly intended to be shocking twists, but despite being interesting ideas, consistently fall flat thanks to the way they're presented; the pacing is so matter-of-fact and no time given for them to breathe. One particularly poor reveal just spells out something we saw already pretty explicitly earlier in the film. It's all in the presentation, and what could have been engaging moments become an excuse to question, "are we meant to be surprised at this?"