Suicide Squad
Warner Bros. | Release Date: August 5, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
40
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 53 Critics
Positive:
11
Mixed:
26
Negative:
16
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
USA TodayBrian TruittAug 2, 2016
Compared to its ilk, Suicide Squad is an excellently quirky, proudly raised middle finger to the staid superhero-movie establishment. Read full review
83
HitfixDrew McWeenyAug 2, 2016
Suicide Squad is not the darkest mainstream superhero comic book movie ever made, nor is it even the darkest live-action film featuring Batman ever made. However, it is gleefully nihilistic, and it takes a different approach to what has become a fairly familiar story form at this point, right at the moment when it feels like superhero movies either have to evolve or die. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave CalhounAug 2, 2016
In the end, the characters are more lasting than the story, which is a standard save-the-city-from-destruction yarn. But this crew is a riot, and their world is intriguing and even a little meaningful. Read full review
80
EmpireDan JolinAug 2, 2016
Like Avengers Assemble forced through a Deadpool mangle, Suicide Squad gives new life to DC’s big-screen universe. So bad-to-the-bone it’s good. Read full review
70
Village VoiceBilge EbiriAug 2, 2016
David Ayer's film may not always work, but when it does, it's a perverse delight. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyAug 2, 2016
Writer-director David Ayer (End of Watch) skillfully sets up the film, introducing each of the crazies with caffeinated comic-book energy. But their mission...is a bit of a bust. The stakes should feel higher. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonAug 4, 2016
Suicide Squad had the potential to be as hilariously irreverent as “Deadpool,” a surprise box-office hit about a similarly sociopathic hero. Instead, it’s just another film that relies on special effects to distract the audience from a story that’s overblown and underwhelming. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 4, 2016
Suicide Squad prides itself on being “dark,” but it’s really just jokey, cynical, and violent, not to mention visually ugly as sin. It’s as subversive as milk. But the cast and the pacing keep it moving. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniAug 3, 2016
Suicide Squad does have quite a few tremendously entertaining sequences of high action and low comedy. It's a shame it never rises beyond that. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanAug 3, 2016
“The Dirty Dozen,” one of my favorite war movies, will no doubt get a 50th-anniversary boxed set next year. Those of us who wait for it can mark time with Suicide Squad, which borrows the same concept and executes it with more lunacy and far less flair. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenAug 2, 2016
It’s Harley Quinn’s movie and everybody else in Suicide Squad is just a supporting character. No surprise there. That’s the way it is in the comic books, too. It’s all about personality, and Harley has that by the freight carload. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 3, 2016
When it comes down to it, there's one overriding factor that lessens the impact of the film's numerous stumbles, and that's this: It's just plain entertaining to see all these warped characters, and all these well-cast actors, bouncing off of one another, interacting with one another, and creating a barely controlled chaos. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottAug 3, 2016
Suicide Squad is a so-so, off-peak superhero movie. It chases after the nihilistic swagger of “Deadpool” and the anarchic whimsy of “Guardians of the Galaxy” but trips over its own feet. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 2, 2016
It’s probably best to think of Suicide Squad as a primer, an entry into a side world of the DC Universe that may pay bigger benefits in later films. It certainly seems like that’s how the filmmakers thought of it. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 2, 2016
It’s a clotted and delirious film, with flashes of preposterous, operatic silliness. But it doesn’t have much room to breathe; there are some dull bits, and Leto’s Joker suffers in comparison with the late Heath Ledger. Read full review
60
Total FilmJamie GrahamAug 2, 2016
Starts off flavourful, turns rather bland. This Injustice League jaunt proves that DC is still a long way behind Marvel for on-screen action. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsEdward DouglasAug 2, 2016
Fans will probably appreciate Suicide Squad for trying something different — and it gets bonus points for diversity — but the weaker characters and generally weak plot keep it from being one of the better comic book movies. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyAug 2, 2016
Like so many of Ayer’s directorial efforts, Suicide Squad feels like it was re-drafted in the editing room. It’s clumsy, disrupted by at least eight different plodding flashbacks, filled with lines of dialogue that cut well into trailers but make zero sense in context, and patched up with an embarrassment of rock-along musical cues. Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 2, 2016
It's the garish swarm of colorfully twisted action that Batman v Superman needed, the anarchic approach such timeworn superheroes deserve. Suicide Squad characters aren't nearly as familiar, so writer-director David Ayer's movie is also messy, not entirely by design. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)John SemleyAug 4, 2016
Regrettably, the film’s place-setting opening lays the scene for a different, more exciting film that never really unfolds. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 3, 2016
It gets props for kinetic energy, bursts of suspense, and a couple of bravura performances (Will Smith & Margot Robbie). But pretty much everything else is either mediocre or substandard and that makes it hard to champion this bloated and cheerless monstrosity. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranAug 3, 2016
Suicide Squad is a concept in search of a story worth telling. Both energized and betrayed by its “Worst.Heroes.Ever” theme and writer-director David Ayer’s trademark visceral filmmaking, it ends up in a kind of limbo, not as strong as partisans will insist or as worthless as its weakest elements would have you believe. Read full review
50
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeAug 2, 2016
Writer-director David Ayer tries hard to make this dirty not-quite-dozen into an engaging band of misfits, but the results feel undercooked and overstuffed, with 10 pounds of supervillain backstory being crammed into a five-pound bag. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 2, 2016
Suicide Squad does have its moments of beautiful comic-book visuals.... Those are just tantalizing hints of a better movie that never materialized. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 2, 2016
The action beats are taut, but the story arc crumbles under the weight of all the movies it steals from. The casting fails to pop, in most instances. Read full review
45
The VergeTasha RobinsonAug 2, 2016
The film doesn't go far enough in setting its own course. Ayer works to establish those villains as gleeful fantasies of unfettered freedom, then fetters them with maudlin backstories that make them all sad, soulful, misused, and misunderstood. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerAug 6, 2016
Writer-director David Ayer doesn’t have the right graphic technique for a comic-book-style jamboree – he’s strictly a noirish-pulp guy – and the characters, all of whom are promisingly introduced, fizzle fast. Read full review
42
MTV NewsAmy NicholsonAug 4, 2016
Instead of focusing on the squad in the title — the chemistry the audience wants to see — Ayer doubles down on the usual DC tics: dark fights, a humdrum dependence on guns and fists, a cynical everyone-sucks grasp of politics, and sudden rain showers that people ignore. It’s moody and mindless, an angry toddler screaming over his parents’ classic rock mix of The Rolling Stones, The Animals, and a 14-year-old song from Eminem. Read full review
42
The Film StageBrian RoanAug 3, 2016
Muddled characters and uneven storytelling are the roots of the issues here, but the ways in which Ayer seems to try to cover up his film’s deficiencies grate most of all. Read full review
42
Consequence of SoundDominick Suzanne-MayerAug 2, 2016
For all of the film’s nonstop, aggressive insistence on its subversive qualities, it’s about as radical and unconventional as a teenager buying a Leftover Crack shirt with their mom’s credit card from Amazon. Read full review
42
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezAug 2, 2016
Suicide Squad isn’t a terrible movie per se and judged against its forbearer, ‘Batman v Superman,’ it resembles a shining beacon of coherence. But Suicide Squad isn’t a very good movie either, a mediocre effort with commonplace ideas of rebelliousness and salvation. Read full review
40
CineVueBen NicholsonAug 4, 2016
Despite its claims to zaniness and colouring outside the lines, probably the most damning indictment of the silly Suicide Squad is that it's unrelentingly bland. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 3, 2016
There’s no one to root for in this movie, and no one whose prospects we care about. Several plot points lack coherence, and inserted flashbacks add to a sense of the film having been fused into shape in the editing room. It seems that Suicide Squad was done in by its own hand. Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeAug 2, 2016
On paper, this could have been the antidote to an increasingly codified strain of comic-book movies, but in the end, it’s just another high-attitude version of the same. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinAug 2, 2016
When you compare Suicide Squad to what James Gunn and Marvel Studios achieved in Guardians of the Galaxy – low-profile property, oddball characters, make-it-fun brief – the film makes you cringe so hard your teeth come loose. But it’s a slog even on its own crushingly puerile terms. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyAug 2, 2016
A puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is, Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains and then doesn’t know what to do with them. Read full review
40
Screen InternationalTim GriersonAug 2, 2016
Boasting a darker, more nihilistic streak than the typical comic-book film, this Warner Bros. release has its kinky pleasures and some amusing nastiness, but in the final analysis there’s simply too much flexing of empty attitude — and far too much self-congratulation for how edgy it thinks it is. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle SmithAug 3, 2016
If it has a genius for anything, it’s disorganization: What promised to be a Super Bowl of villainy turned out more like toddler playtime. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comSusan WloszczynaAug 3, 2016
With a few, rare exceptions, the attempts at humor in “Suicide Squad” land with a thud—that is, if you can hear such a sound over the deafening din of gunfire and the bombastic score. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 2, 2016
But folks, this is a lousy script, blobby like the endlessly beheaded minions of the squad's chief adversary. It's not satisfying storytelling; the flashbacks roll in and out, explaining either too much or too little, and the action may be violent but it's not interesting. Read full review
37
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanAug 3, 2016
Sadly, Suicide Squad feels like a watered-down version of what could have been a stiff drink. Read full review
33
IndieWireDavid EhrlichAug 2, 2016
Suicide Squad never has the courage of its convictions — it doesn’t own anything. At best, Ayer rents some pre-existing pop iconography and charges us $15 to watch him take it around the block for a spin. Forget the “Worst. Heroes. Ever.” These guys don’t even know how to be bad. Read full review
30
The New YorkerAnthony LaneAug 6, 2016
To say that the movie loses the plot would not be strictly accurate, for that would imply that there was a plot to lose, and that Ayer, in a forgetful moment, left it in the glove compartment of his car on the way to the studio. Read full review
30
SlateJacob BroganAug 4, 2016
Suicide Squad’s only triumph may be that it manages to make Batman v Superman look better by comparison. Bloated and baffling as that film was, it at least had a coherent aesthetic—a morose aesthetic, to be sure, but an aesthetic all the same. Suicide Squad, by contrast, is little more than a drab patchwork, its stitching the only thing uglier than the cloth. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinAug 2, 2016
The visuals in the final battle have some charm: They reminded me of early Tsui Hark Hong Kong extravaganzas like Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain and A Chinese Ghost Story (which he produced). But there was passion in those HK pictures, along with acrobatic wire-work. Promiscuous CGI makes even the miraculous seem ho-hum. Read full review
30
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 2, 2016
Harley Quinn’s entrance is the best moment in Suicide Squad. After that, you can leave. Robbie is a criminally appealing actress, likable in just about every way, but that intro aside, Suicide Squad doesn’t serve her well. It serves no one well, least of all its audience. Read full review
30
ScreenCrushMatt SingerAug 2, 2016
From the first scene to the last, it’s an absolute mess. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineJake ColeAug 3, 2016
Like the recruited criminals themselves, the film longs to be bad, yet its forced by outside pressures to follow narrow, preset rules. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezAug 3, 2016
There isn’t a moment of spontaneous fun or humor in this long, turgid movie, the latest let-down for rabid DC Comics fans who’ve been waiting for someone to pick up the baton Christopher Nolan left behind and do this universe justice. With “Suicide Squad,” the long wait continues. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 2, 2016
Suicide Squad wussies out when it should have been down with the Dirty Dozen of DC Comics. Audiences complained that Batman v Superman was too dark and depressing. So director-writer David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury) counters with light and candy-assed. I call bullshit. Read full review
20
SalonAndrew O'HehirAug 3, 2016
Decadence is supposed to be fun, surely, or at least more fun than the desperate, sludgy, frantic mess of Suicide Squad. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAug 4, 2016
In a word, Suicide Squad is trash. In two words, it’s ugly trash. Read full review
0
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 3, 2016
It’s the kind of torment you can wish on your worst enemy without feeling too guilty, not something to inflict permanent damage, just two hours of soul-sickening confusion and sensory torment. Read full review
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