BELOW THE BORDER

SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.

TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Suicide Squad became a sensation due to its idea of assembling bad guys & casting cashable actors to play them. True enough, the characters in this film are the only vehicles that run the show. Only. Will Smith as Deadshot & Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn are the pixel-to-pixel rebirths of our favorite comic book villains in live action. Killer Croc's (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) prosthetics look great. With all these being said, we've come to the end of the best parts.

The major issue with this movie is the bipolar ends of reality & fantasy that loggerhead with each other! On one hand, we have grounded-to-earth governmental agendas, vigilantes like Batman (Ben Affleck) & assassins like Deadshot. On the other, we have ridiculously out-of-the-world stories about magical beings as Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) & mutants as El Diablo (Jay Hernandez). The fabric on these two provinces do not match at all, let alone mash!

If and only if the plot's not wafer-thin, this project could have at least been saved from committing suicide. With lifeless writing as top-up, the whole experience of watching scene after scene appearing on screen is a tiresome bore! No tension build-ups, no riveting actions, nothing! Although the personas' introductions are serviceable, it consumes too much of the runtime. Visual proofs rather than dialogues to explain these people would have been appreciated more!

The dramatic situation's not shown until halfway through. One does not save it as a twist, because it doesn't work that way. Audiences need to know who are these guys going against with! There has to be a purpose to creating the team in the first place and not the other way around! Blame the screenwriting for this. When you do get to the villain, you have no clue what is her motivation. It is safe to say that the notion to include Enchantress has pretty much ruined the entire motion picture! Writers for big budgeted films like this are paid millions of dollars, just to write silly plans such as officials utilizing love interests to achieve their needs & doctors falling in love with mental patients. Really? These may have happened in the comics. But, when adapting to silver screen, squeeze some of the those brain juices, please.

Having too many characters in a letterbox entertainment is another trouble faced here. And killing one after a couple of scenes like Slipknot (Adam Beach) does not solve it either; in fact, it makes things worse. Speaking of characters, where's the Joker (Jared Leto)? Seriously, 10 minutes of screen time? The trailers & teasers showed more of him than the picture ever did! Promotional managers should never play with movie-goers' expectations. Out of all the characters, Jared Leto's Joker was the most anticipated one & he barely appeared! Most of the scenes allocated for him, you are left scratching heads, wondering why is he mobbing, who is he kidnapping and so on.

Forced humor, subpar graphics, childish editing, unfit pop songs as background music & wrong timing placement of title card are the other minuses, while the neon color template, biographical data of inmates, Batman's cameo, Flash's flash & Dr. June Moone's transformation to Enchantress through a reverse hand-grab sequence are worth watching out for.

"That's just a whole lot of pretty and a whole lot of crazy."