Suicide Squad

"It's dull and depressing and a reminder of everything that's wrong with modern blockbusters."

"Suicide Squad is less an actual movie and more an assemblage of moments, moments mostly to do with popular music appropriated around shots of spectacle, with every single scene trying to hit a crescendo of cool and the film, thus, failing to find any peaks at all."

"Suicide Squad has all the ingredients that are collectively essential to a superhero film. Action, witty dialogues delivered at the best of times and lots of special effects thrown in as well. But what this gang of delightfully crazy rogues offer is something subversive, a disregard for any pretense of doing something noble, and yet, they are all motivated by a simple desire to just get a chance at living a normal life again."

"After the success of Marvel superhero films, DC wants to jump on the bandwagon too and has fast-tracked its own ventures. In a bid to make up for lost ground, its banking on edgier storylines but a little more character and plot development was sorely needed in both Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and in Suicide Squad."

"...comes across as a film made for the DC Universe fans who in all likelihood will lap up the film. However if you are not one, the film will feel like multiple action sequences that have been strung together with a reasonable story line to form one feature film."

"Suicide Squad is an ensemble action movie in the vein of The Dirty Dozen and Inglourious Basterds: unpretentious, irreverent, perverse and unexpectedly moving. It has little of the sentimentalism and pretentiousness of recent superhero movies like Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War, and like Guardians of the Galaxy it points the way forward for a less conventional outing in the genre."

"So sadly it's not the masterpiece we expected, but it's also not an utter disappointment. It manages to be ridiculously fun in some of its loud and crazy extravagance. Overall, I'll still watch DC movies, but I do feel like they are missing something that the Marvel counterpart has got right. Maybe it's heart, maybe Marvel just have more practice but I hope DC can redeem themselves soon."

"Go for it... at least once. It has its flaws, but nothing you can't ignore. And it has Will, Margot and Viola. And it's all about loving your villains, after all."

"This is a messy mash-up that has neither style nor real substance to make it exciting enough. For sure this is nowhere near as cool or nihilistically humorous as 'Deadpool.'"

"Suicide Squad is a big, bloated mess of a superhero film, with a bipolar screenplay. Known for his realistic, gritty films like End of Watch and Fury, you can see flashes of the old David Ayer in this film. Too few and far between though."

"Jared Leto's Joker tries as does Margot Robbie who brings up the rear, literally, of Suicide Squad but Will Smith-led Suicide Squad is unmanageable."

"Joker is seen in a never-before-seen avatar, which shows a different side to the multi-faceted chaotic personality. The cinematic experience is not to be missed. The 'heroes' of the movie truly become heroes and that brief transformation is worth watching and inspiring."

"Suicide Squad doesn't trust its instincts for mischief and derangement enough. The contours of a truly mean and subversive comic book adaptation flash through in some portions of Suicide Squad, especially when Waller and Harley Quinn are around, but they are defeated by the curse of the ultimate Enchantress – the please-all Hollywood blockbuster."

"Overall, as mentioned earlier, the film would appeal only to DC Fans. For others it would be a loud and noisy affair."

"What Marvel achieved by painstakingly releasing film after film to establish its superheroes, DC tries to do with hyper-stylised minute-long intros for the dozen characters that populate—no, crowd—Suicide Squad."

"It isn't just the celebration of casual violence, or the uneasy marriage of a gritty real-world aesthetic with comic book rules..."