The oldest spawn and I rented Suicide Squad today. He really likes the movie, but I had yet to see it. We paid the rental fee and settled in for an afternoon movie. I had heard mediocre things about the movie, but went in with an open mind.

The premise of the film had a lot of potential; a band of bad guys who are put to work fighting evil to earn years off their prison sentences. They’re disposable fighters, but they’re highly skilled and capable. This incarnation of the team included Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Killer Croc for its leads. The rest of the team consists of secondary villains from the DC universe who are drafted into working for Amanda Waller and her Task Force X.

The first big flaw in the film comes at the beginning with the introduction of the characters. It takes far too long, and felt so staged they might as well just have stood at a podium with a slide deck, filling you in on backstory. I enjoyed getting to know each of the characters, but it just wasn’t done well.

When the story finally got going it wasn’t too bad. There was some fun action, a big evil to defeat, and you got to know and understand some of these bad guys. Yet, I still felt like there was something missing. No matter how much I enjoyed the action scenes, I felt like the moments of character building were too forced. The was only one scene in a bar that really felt genuine, and made me wish for more shots like that.

Overall, the movie felt like it just lacked in ‘craft’. Character development was too heavily invested in Will Smith as the noble bad guy, and with Harley Quinn as the crazy Joker lover. I never felt like what could have been a great ensemble piece, ever really came together. That’s the biggest disappointment for me.

Would I recommend seeing the movie? As a rental, sure, it’s not the worst thing out there. It does tie very neatly into the rest of the DC universe movies coming up, which is a nice touch. Even Batman and Flash make an appearance. Would I watch it multiple times? Probably not.