Once Upon a Time...I Went On a Nostalgia Trip

I honestly don't know if this is a good movie or not. In some ways, I fall under the intended audience for it, meaning I am extremely well-versed in Hollywood history, black-and-white westerns, and the events surrounding the Sharon Tate murder. But...if there's a story, a progression, a reason the camera needs to keep filming, I couldn't find it. It's two days in the lives of an aging cowboy star and his close friend and stunt double, and the circumstances they run across...followed by a tag that has nothing to do with story and everything to do with spectacle. They also needed to justify the marketing and Margot Robbie's existence in this movie as Sharon Tate.

Let me qualify some statements. I can get behind reasonable nostalgia and a man coming to terms with his has-been status. There are some truly vulnerable moments in the movie, all of them come from DiCaprio, unsurprisingly the most talented actor in the cast. There's also a little bit of La La Land in that Tarantino documents a Los Angeles that no longer exists. The monuments have mostly been torn down and the city has a short memory.

On a personal level, I connected with the episode wherein Tate finds herself in Westwood and heads to the Bruin Theater to watch the movie she is in. I went to UCLA. I know Westwood and its twin movie theaters real well. Going to a movie by myself was something I did, hoping either to be entertained for a couple hours or for the creators to impart some wisdom I can use in my own filmmaking pursuits (I still do this, though I'm in grad school in Texas). I also got a kick out of watching how other film-goers reacted to what was happening on the screen.

Enough personal nostalgia, back to the review.

I once had someone tell me that Tarantino's schtick is "Look how many movies I've seen and how much I know about them!" He's a fan lucky enough to find himself behind the camera. It goes without saying that one should love movies if they're going to make them, but outside of a handful of moments, the movie is just interesting. The substance is lacking.

Being a big Bruce Lee fan, I have to address his inclusion in the film. Inadequate portrayals are nothing new to me. Not once has Hollywood gotten him right. Tarantino joins the list of failures. Yes, he talked a big game. Yes, he was a bonafide character big on theatrics. Yes, he knew Tate and Jay Sebring (who got Lee his first break in the American film industry). No, he didn't say he would cripple Muhammad Ali, he said the size of Ali's fists would be too big to handle. And no, he wouldn't lose a fight to a stuntman. Lee didn't just fight on screen. He was forced to leave Hong Kong at 18 because he got into street fights for fun. The point is, Bruce Lee isn't a joke or a strawman for Brad Pitt to certify his macho credentials.

I consider this movie an imperfect mess with the occasional high point.

Suicide Squad Fails to Set Itself Apart

This poster is more colorful than the characters or the film.

Ever since Marvel's Avengers broke the box office in 2012, superhero movies have become the mainstream of the mainstream in Hollywood. The studios thrown them out systematically, leaving the audiences enough time to digest one's events without allowing them to lose momentum and interest in the next. As such, formulaic structures are to be expected, but not enough to stifle good storytelling and creativity.

Even in the superhero genre, the producers are expected to do more than insert scenario A and plot points one, two, and three to come out with a stale story arc. When the movie is titled Suicide Squad and the marketing focused around a bunch of comic book bad guys thrown together against their will and being rebellious at every step, the creative personnel are certainly expected to add something out of the ordinary.

Suicide Squad, however, is anticlimactic in virtually every sense of the word. It is merely another special effects dominated light show that falls right in step with the superhero (or super-antihero) assembly line. No risks are taken, no ground broken, and yet it will do the one thing it is designed to do--make money.

Much like Avengers, a mismatched and dysfunctional group of powered individuals are forced to work together and form an uneasy alliance. Unlike Marvel's showpiece, DC's latest episode gives us the five-to-ten minute backstory behind each character and waits until about a third of the way through to really ramp up the story. Director David Ayer, who has certainly done better work (i.e Fury, Training Day), could have easily cut the exposition phase in half and used the difference to create legitimate conflict rather than the artificial uneasiness that comes through in theaters. 

Ayer deserves double blame for the convoluted film because he is the sole credited writer. The script is not only formulaic, but has numerous holes. 

As a result, the audience cannot fully invest themselves in the characters' plight. Will Smith's "Deadshot" is perhaps the closest the film gets to solid characterization, as he is at the center of the movie's brighter moments, and Margot Robbie's hyper-objectified Harley Quinn is a distant second. The rest, however, are just along for the ride (and some advance advertising for a later DC film). The actors are not given the space to really give their characters a fighting chance for respectability. Yes, we know why they are doing what they do (they have someone they love or they love themselves enough to want to continue living), but anything more is completely lost.

Another casualty is the potentially world-ending situation created by Enchantress (Cara Delevigne) and her brother Incubus (Robert Atkin Downes). No longer worshiped like gods, they want to wipe out humanity. Cliched? Yes. Standard fare for DC? Also yes. Although the situation is hard to buy into as it stands, the film completely eliminates the suspended disbelief necessary for a film of this nature to truly work. 

Ayer continues Zack Snyder's pattern of including biblical references in an odd and unhelpful manner in regards to why they are even in the film, again proving how much Suicide Squad is not rebellious but heavily conformed to the norm. 

Considering how starved for creativity and good storytelling DC's norm is, that is a very bad sign.