Tired of good guys? The Captain Americas, ‘yer Iron Men or Wondrous Women? If their virtuous acts and heroic posing are wearing thin or not to your liking, along comes a crew of anti-heroes willing to bend the rules to protect the planet. “We’re the bad guys,” says Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), “it’s what we do.”
Based on the DC Comic of the same name, the Suicide Squad a.k.a. Task Force X, is a ragtag team of death row villains sprung from jail by a secret government agency run by ruthless bureaucrat Amanda Waller (Viola Davis). “In a world of flying men and monsters,” she says, “this is the only way to protect our country.” Waller’s counter-intuitive idea is to utilize their specific sets of skills—essentially creating mayhem—to quell large-scale threats against humanity. In return they are awarded clemency for their crimes. “I’m fighting fire with fire,” says Waller.
The all-star cast of baddies include assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn, a crazed former psychiatrist with a love of beating people with baseball bats and Joker (Jared Leto), deadly boomerangist Boomerang (Jai Courtney), fire-conjurer El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and the reptilian Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).
To keep the baddies on the straight and narrow they are led into battle by righteous team leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Also they are implanted with micro-bombs to encourage them to do the right thing. Complicating an already complicated situation is the Joker’s plan to extract Harley from the group and the appearance of Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), an archaeologist possessed by an ancient evil force.
For the first forty minutes or so “Suicide Squad” is loopy fun. Zippy, it rips along setting up the story and the characters in an extended origin sequence that gives us all the information we need to understand the rest of the movie. It’s a catch-up that non comic book lovers will appreciate. It is also the strongest part of the movie.
When it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the team in battle against “non-human entities” the C.G.I. kicks into high gear, covering every inch of the screen, and “Suicide Squad” becomes considerably less interesting. Set to a classic rock soundtrack the large-scale action scenes are muddled, dark and rather generic, especially given the special skills of each of the combatants.
About the Squad. For a group of psychopaths they sure seem to be OK people. The worst thing they do—minus the wholesale carnage the government allows them to create—is go temporarily AWOL for a drink in between battles. Over cocktails they discuss life, love and motivations. There are rom coms with more edge.
Much has been written about Jared Leto’s commitment to the role of Joker, and I’m sure the stories are true—he apparently sent a live rat to Robbie and a dead hog to the crew—but it’s hard to see the payoff in his method. His take on the character is weird but not as wild as you might want, and considerably less present on screen than you might think.
Smith makes more of an impression simply through the sheer strength of his charisma. Like the rest of the team he isn’t given much to do but he makes the most of it. Robbie makes an impression in a dangerous and flirty role but her New York accent comes and goes with the frequency of a rush hour subway train.
The rest are placeholders, not given enough to do to actually be interesting and even when they are in action, it’s so dark it’s hard to tell exactly who is shooting/stabbing/punching who.
On the plus side “Suicide Squad” doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously as “Batman v Superman.” On the downside director David Ayer took a premise that gave him permission to go as far overboard as he wanted and yet the movie feels familiar, like it is trying to echo the very movies it should be an antidote to.
To prepare for his role in Suicide Squad method actor Jared Leto went full Joker.
“I had to be committed beyond belief,” he says. As the third Oscar winner to play The Joker, after Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, he said, “We knew we had to strike new ground. There had been such great work we knew we had to go in a different direction.”
An adaptation of the DC Comics antihero series, Suicide Squad sees supervillains like El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) as well as Leto’s Harlequin of Hate perform perilous black ops missions in return for clemency. Director David Ayer describes it as a “comic-book version of The Dirty Dozen.”
Leto immersed himself in the role to the point his cast mates didn’t know where the actor ended and the Joker began. Jai Courtney said, “Let’s put it this way. I haven’t seen him, since we started working, out-of-character.” Margot Robbie and Scott Eastwood, who is Leto’s friend in real life, both say the actor’s on-set behaviour scared them.
To create his take on the Clown Prince of Crime he mixed-and-matched influences from the Batman comic Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth along with shamans and Mexican cartels. “The Joker is fantastic because there are no rules,” he says.
The only rule Leto subscribed to was to never break out of character, whether he was filming or not. His conduct made headlines when it was reported that he gave the cast and crew some Joker inspired presents.
“He did some bad things, Jared Leto did,” said co-star Viola Davis. “He gave some really horrific gifts.”
Robbie, who plays the baseball bat-wielding villain Harley Quinn, received a love letter and a live rat in a black box. She kept the rodent, which she named Rat Rat, for the duration of the Toronto shoot because, “If Harley got something from Joker, she’d probably cherish it.” When filming was complete Guillermo del Toro adopted the rodent renaming it Vestuniano.
Will Smith, who plays sharpshooter Deadshot, was also sent a letter accompanied by a bullet and Killer Croc portrayer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje received a “used” Playboy magazine.
Leto’s first day of the shoot gift was an eye opener. He missed the first few days of filming, so to let everyone know he was thinking of them he sent over a dead hog and a video of the Joker.
“Basically, what he said was, ‘Guys, I can’t be there but I want you to know I’m doing my work as hard as you guys,'” Adam Beach said. “The video he showed is in character. It blew our minds away. We realized that day, this is real.”
Viola Davis was spared Leto’s twisted gift giving. “I did not receive any personally, or else I would have got my husband, who was called ‘Headache Ball’ when he played football, and I would have said, ‘Take care of the Joker,’” she said.
Did his methods pay off? Seems so. Ben Affleck describes Leto’s performance as “genius” and Ayer declares, “I think it’s going to be hard for anyone to ever imagine anyone else as the Joker.”
Leto thinks his process was worth it. “Other people can show up and are genius but I did what I needed to do to deliver. And we had a good time with it.”
From marilyn.ca: “If you love going to the movies, but you’re never sure what to see, Richard Crouse has the answer! Check out these sure-to-be blockbusters to keep you entertained all summer!” They argue about “Finding Dory” and preview “The BFG,” “The Secret Life of Pets,” “Jason Bourne,” “Suicide Squad” and “Ghostbusters.”
“Run All Night” plays like an alternate universe “Taken” set in a world where a killer played by Liam Neeson actually feels remorse for all the havoc he has created.
Once again Neeson is a father who will do almost anything to protect his family, including using his very special set of skills, but the situation is very different from the ones that saw him traverse the globe as kick-ass dad Bryan Mills.
In “Run All Night” he plays Jimmy Conlon, a hitman for the Irish mob. His boss is his childhood friend—his only friend, in fact—kingpin Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). They have a bond forged by decades of having one another’s backs. The pair are like brothers, until a disagreement between their sons (Boyd Holbrook and Joel Kinnaman) spirals out of control the two best friends become mortal enemies.
Action man du jour Neeson goes mano a mano with Ed Harris and faster than you can say, “Tell everyone to get ready, Jimmy’s coming,” he goes then mano a mano a mano a mano a mano a mano against everyone else in an exhibition of extreme, grunting manliness. Jimmy is a man who has done some very bad things, and continues to, using a very particular set of skills to nullify anyone who gets between him and the safety of his son.
Unlike the “Taken” series, which is content with straight-ahead action, “Run All Night” attempts to deepen the story by examining Jimmy’s conscious, delving into themes of atonement and guilt, topped off with a “I wanted to save you from having the same kind of life I had” subplot. Neeson really wants us to know that Jimmy is a killer but not a bad dad and the emphasis on adding psychological layers to the character drags the movie down in the last forty minutes.
It’s great fun to see Harris and Neeson ooze testosterone and the movie does have some very stylish action scenes plus a relentless hitman (Common) but its efforts to examine Neeson’s Irish guilt aren’t nearly as interesting or well done as the action story.
“The Wizard of Oz” has lived at the very center of popular culture for more than a hundred years. David Lynch cribbed from the story for his film “Wild at Heart,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is filled with references from books and isn’t C3PO just the Tin Man in a gold suit?
A new film—actually a remake of a much-loved 1987 movie—brings a new Tin Man to town. “RoboCop” stars Joel Kinnaman as the half human, half robot police officer who struggles to find his heart.
Set in 2028 the story takes off when Detroit cop and family man Alex James Murphy (“The Killing’s” Kinnaman) is almost blown to bits by a drug dealer looking to silence him. Burnt on eighty percent of his body, missing limbs, deaf and blind in one eye, the bomb appeared to have done the job. That is until OmniCorp, a multinational company run by ruthless businessman Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) sees a marketing opportunity with the fallen hero.
The company’s totally robotic law enforcement drones are being used worldwide with effective but deadly results. OmniCorp wants to expand into the lucrative American market but is stymied by Senator Hubert Dreyfuss (Zach Grenier) and his question: How can a robot know what it means to take a life if it has never lived a life?
Murphy is the answer. The catastrophically injured officer becomes the ghost in the machine, an organic brain for a mostly robotic body in a suit tailored by Daft Punk. He’s a rootin’, tootin’ crime fighting machine, but will the human part of the robot fight its way to the surface and allow Alex to get his robo-revenge on those who have done him wrong?
Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop” was social satire that used ideas about corporations and privatizing the police as a jumping off point for some pointed—if action packed—commentary. Today’s “RoboCop” doesn’t have the same shock appeal.
In our world where Detroit has gone bankrupt, unable to afford decent policing and national food chains use yoga mat chemicals in their bread, the black humor of the first film is now a dark reality laced with some man-machine ennui. It’s less fun than the original, but does have some high points.
Swedish born Kinnaman gives the character a Nordic sense of ennui that would make Ingmar Bergman grin. Alex is, for a while at least, tormented by the idea of his very existence. He brings some stoicism to the role and does an OK job of jawbone acting under the heavy mask but the emotional connection that Peter Weller forged with the characters (and the audience) in the original is missing. Murphy’s wife is nicely played by Abbie Cornish but despite some scenes with her and his son David (John Paul Ruttan) the story is focused elsewhere.
More expressive are Gary Oldham and Michael Keaton. Oldham takes a generic, morally divided scientist and gives him spark, while Keaton relishes playing the bad guy. Samuel L. Jackson also livens things up as a Glen Beck type TV host who fuels the flames of controversy with incendiary statements like, “Has the US Senate become pro-crime?”
All three are big performances that stand out in a big, loud movie, but central to the story is a smaller role from Jay Baruchel as OmniCorp’s head of marketing. He’s a corporate weasel who works amoral marketing angles to make RoboCop palatable to the public. “He transforms!” he says. “Kids love it. Focus numbers are through the roof.”
Baruchel doesn’t over or underplay the character, he simply allows him to breath and in doing so creates the most chillingly realistic portrait of venality in the film. He’s the real wizard behind the curtain.
“RoboCop” is a more generic film than its predecessor. It simply doesn’t have the vulgar verve that Verhoeven brought to the original, but between the explosions and bullets it does tackle some big, timely questions about drone warfare and corporate responsibility. The movie doesn’t exactly take the time to tackle and then wrestle these ideas to the ground, but hey, at least the new suit is really cool. It’s enough to make Oz’s Tin Man jealous.
If the original RoboCop movie is any indication, sometimes life does imitate art.
The 1987 film shows a crime-ridden and financially ruined Detroit turning to a part-human, part-robot cop to police the streets. As far as I know, no cyborgs have ever patrolled the neighbourhoods of Motor City, but 27 years after the movie hit theatres, Michigan’s most populous city declared Chapter Nine, becoming the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.
Prescient? Perhaps.
Fosterwealth.com wrote, “With Detroit’s bankruptcy, we’ve seen much of RoboCop come to pass,” while screenwriter Ed Neumeier remembers a note written in the margin of his copy of the script, “The future left Detroit behind.”
The writer also told CNN, “We are now living in the world that I was proposing in RoboCop.”
The original Peter Weller movie lived at the centre of popular culture when it came out, spawning two sequels, a television series, two animated shows, a mini-series, video games and several comic books.
And today RoboCop is still a going concern.
Later this year a 10-foot-tall tribute statue will be unveiled in Detroit and this week a remake will become the first RoboCop movie to be released in IMAX.
The new RoboCop is an all-star affair, with Swedish star Joel Kinnaman as the title character and appearances from Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson and Jay Baruchel. Just don’t expect a straight-up copy. “I’m not trying to remake RoboCop,” says director José Padilha, “because I don’t think RoboCop is remake-able.”
Instead, Kinnaman says, the new film will be “realistic,” and “will have a satirical quality… It’s going to have that wink in the eye, but we’re not looking to replicate the [original director Paul] Verhoeven tone.”
The one thing the two films have in common for sure is that while both are set in Detroit, neither used the city as the principal shooting location. Verhoeven filmed his movie in Pennsylvania and Texas whereas the new movie was lensed mainly in Toronto and Vancouver.
Even criminals love RoboCop
Another incident illustrates how the film aided real life law enforcement… at least once.
A robbery suspect/movie fan in Sacramento, Calif., tried to elude police by hiding out in a movie theatre showing RoboCop. He became so immersed in the film he didn’t notice the cops evacuating the audience, leaving him alone and busted when the lights came on.
Tired of good guys? The Captain Americas, ‘yer Iron Men or Wondrous Women? If their virtuous acts and heroic posing are wearing thin or not to your liking, along comes a crew of anti-heroes willing to bend the rules to protect the planet. “We’re the bad guys,” says Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), “it’s what we do.”
