Suicide Squad

At this point, even the most die-hard comic book movie apologists would have to admit that the superhero genre is stuck in a rut. The genre demands reinvention, but for all of the chest-beating swagger and style of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, the needle hardly even flinches. A screenwriter turned director who excels at stories of violent group dynamics (Fury; Sabotage), Ayer probably squeezes the most disreputable fun into this PG-13 film as he was allowed. Yet all of the symptoms of the disease are still present: a surplus of origin stories, supervillains with nebulous motivations, and a choppy plot forced to serve too many masters. Suicide Squad spreads so thin that it only makes time for one layer of character development, even for the characters we actually come to care about. There is so much universe-building and overexplaining that the movie frequently forgets to have any fun. D.B.