Will Smith

Suicide Squad Review

/ studentfilmreview / 1 Comment

People seem to think I hate superhero films, I know, what fools. I don’t hate superhero films, I just hate bad movies, and lately it’s been less of a Venn diagram and more two circles trying to angrily mate. But okay, this time they have a good director. David Ayer, the man behind the excellent End Of Watch is at the helm, so let’s hope this one isn’t as bad as Batman Vs. Superman.

Suicide Squad stars Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinneman with Jai Courtney and Jared Leto and is written and directed by David Ayer. The film follows the titular squad of bad guys, furloughed from prison in an attempt to save the world from a cosmic threat.

The acting made Suicide Squad one of the most boring films this year. There was all this big talk of Will Smith being a bad guy this time around, but his version of Deadshot is just like EVERY OTHER WILL SMITH CHARACTER. Margot Robbie is doing a hyper version of her role in Wolf Of Wall Street, this time in smudged make up. And that’s it. I know there are more members of the Squad, but they are almost cardboard cut-outs in comparison to Smith and Robbie.

Cara Delevingne does nothing but wiggle her arms and gyrate her hips as Enchantress, and poor Karen Fukuhara (who I was really looking forward to seeing) has about two lines and is constantly wearing a mask. Deadshot and Harley Quinn get multiple flashbacks to establish their characters, the rest of the crew are given one-line back-stories by Captain Whitey-McStubbly, it’s poor character development. Now let’s turn to Jared Leto. Yes, I know you’re trying to impress everyone with your method acting and your CRAZY antics, but when you are doing nothing interesting on screen, it just looks pathetic. He’s jumping from Heath Ledger to Jack Nicholson and not doing anything to make himself stand out. And despite being all over the marketing, he’s only in around ten minutes of a two hour film.

Let’s talk editing. The films is a choppy mess, flipping from laughter and giggles to child murder with nothing in between. The film is known for having multiple reshoots, and these scenes are so easy to spot, they look completely different to the rest of the film. Whoever did the editing in the final action scene was obviously having a laugh with the audience. The screen goes from barely visible to blinding white. You will get a migraine from the abrupt shifts, guaranteed.

The CGI applied for the big bad guy, it makes Gods Of Egypt look competent. The contrast of the characters is so out of sync with background, it’s like it’s not even trying. That could very much be the tagline for the film, “We know it’s terrible, so we’re not going to try.”

If anyone can actually tell me the plot details of Suicide Squad then congratulations, you’re a liar. Stuff just happens in Suicide Squad, none of it making any sense. There is a blue bolt of lightning shooting up into the air above New York City (apparently in the film it’s been there for three days, but everyone must have ignored it until now) and we never have an explanation for why it’s there. Just like BvS, the film is too edited and overlong at the same time. Anything that would have given context has been stripped out and filled in with lame attempts to ape the Deadpool “rude-words-are-funny” style of humour.

One thing I will say though, the music is great. Not the score, that’s pretty generic, but the use of licensed music is well done. Grace’s “You Don’t Own Me”, The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” and Animals’ “House Of The Rising Sun” all fit the film and are a joy to hear in a cinema sound system.

It’s obvious that everyone at DC doesn’t want to make films. They just feel they have to because The Avengers happened. DC, not everyone gets to be Marvel, and oh honey, you can’t compete with that, you don’t have what it takes.

Score: 2/10 A waste of a good concept and cast.

Independence Day : Resurgence Review

/ studentfilmreview / 3 Comments

2016 is looking like the year of unnecessary sequels. With Zoolander 2, Absolutely Fabulous and Jason Bourne all coming out this year, it’s cementing the old, tired adage of Hollywood not having any new ideas. But, here we go, with another film that’s over twenty years old getting a sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence.

Independence Day: Resurgence stars Jeff Goldblum, Liam Hemsworth, Maika Monroe and Jessie Usher and is directed by Roland Emmerich. Set twenty years after the first film, the aliens that Earth defended against come back, with more resolve to destroy the planet this time.

I wasn’t that big a fan of the first Independence Day. I’m not a fan of disaster movies in general, I find them boring for the most part. So it was with great reluctance that I went to see Independence Day: Resurgence (titled in the great tradition of “Name of film, colon, ominous sounding word beginning with RE”). I’ll try and be professional about this, but I’m just calling my biases out beforehand, just to be open.

You would think if it was a film set twenty years after the original film, they might add in some new characters. While they do put some new characters in, they are all intrinsically linked back to the older characters, most of which look like their coming back for the paycheck. The problem with having so many characters though is that none of them get enough screen time. Most of the new ones get only the basest of character development, where something could have been added, especially to Jessie Usher’s character, who is the son of Will Smith’s character from the original. The older characters as well have script issues, with going from rivals to best friends without anything in between.

The abundance of characters leads me onto the second problem I have with the film, the editing. Not in a camera/cinematography way, more in terms of the story. Independence Day: Resurgence suffers from “The Phantom Menace Effect”. The Phantom Menace‘s last third switches from tragedy to comedy to action too quickly, the emotional tones of the film are all messed up. Independence Day: Resurgence has this same problem in its final act. It jumps between six different scenes, each with differing emotional changes, with the film feeling inconsistent at best and jarring at worst. It’s even worse when people start dying, most aren’t given proper due, so it feels anticlimactic.

The only really shining light through all of it is Jeff Goldblum. He has some funny lines (which really is saying something, this script is full of weak jokes and “comedic” characters) and he looks like he’s having fun while everyone else is just there. But that’s Jeff Goldblum, you get what you pay for. It would have been better if Will Smith had returned though. His double act with Goldblum is one of the reasons why the first Independence Day is loved and I think that it would have supplied a lot of the charm that is missing.

If you are looking for a film filled with mindless fun then you’ve come to the right place. Roland Emmerich is the guy who directed The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and White House Down, along with the original Independence Day. If anyone knows how to create big explosions on screen while supplying a melodramatic and cheesy script, it’s this guy. But sadly, Independence Day isn’t that good a film. It just stands there, lamenting it’s glory days, saying “Hey kids, I was kind of great once.”

Score: 4/10 Big, loud, CGI-filled, but just not that fun or memorable.