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This article was published 05/08/2016 (3705 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A pack of misfits facing the prospect of lifetime imprisonment are offered a chance at freedom if they pull off a dangerous mission that will employ their murderous skills, but probably end in their deaths.

To see this story done right, you’d have to go back to Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, a 1967 war movie in which such a mission is undertaken by 12 imprisoned, mostly psychopathic soldiers with nothing to lose. 

While director David Ayer showed a facility for Second World War stories in the film Fury, he carries out his own treacherous assignment with Suicide Squad, grafting the Dirty Dozen premise onto a DC Comics movie in which the objective is to provide a screen introduction to seven super-villains hitherto unseen on the big screen.

It’s a tough thing to balance the requirements of a satisfying action movie while meeting the logistical story demands of a billion-dollar franchise. This is, again, Warner Bros/DC Comics playing catch-up with the Marvel Universe. As with Batman v Superman, it’s a muddled affair, trying to cram too many characters and too much big-picture exposition in a small, two-hour hole.

The idea of employing dangerous super-criminals falls on cold-blooded government functionary Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who reasons that the world got lucky with Superman, but a similarly-powered villain demands a strategic response consisting of bad guys compelled to do good. She forms her own team, consisting of assassin/super-marksman Deadshot (Will Smith), psycho-babe Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), murderous Aussie thief Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), scaly cannibalistic mutant Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), fire-starting Latino ex-gangster Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a semi-possessed archeologist named June Moone who occasionally transforms into an ageless witch called Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) and a ropemaster called Slipknot (Adam Beach, criminally underused given that Slipknot is the closest thing DC Comics has to a Spider-Man character).

They all come under the command of can-do soldier Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), aided by samurai-woman Katana (Karen Fukuhara) armed with a sword that consumes human souls. Flag is somewhat compromised here because he happens to be desperately in love with June Moone, but not Enchantress. Got that?

The biggest stars are rewarded with the most back-story. Hence, we get to see that Deadshot, when he’s not murdering people, is a devoted dad to his little girl. As far as the DC universe is concerned, the most important character is Robbie’s Harley Quinn, a psychiatrist who came under the spell of the Joker (Jared Leto) and subsequently served as his submissive in comic books’ most sadomasochistic relationship since Catwoman cracked her whip at Batman. 

Anyway, before you can say “self-fulfilling prophecy,” one of Waller’s team goes rogue and it falls on the rest to stop that member’s vaguely apocalyptic designs.

As a filmmaker, Ayer (End of Watch) is an interesting hire, holding the promise of bringing a little real-world gravity into a franchise that has suffered under the bombastic sturm und drang of Man of Steel/Batman v Superman director Zack Snyder.

But then, well… you’ve got a character who’s a witch. If the movie begins with a hardcore action premise along the lines of Escape From New York, it ends up resembling Ghostbusters, and that stuff falls out of Ayer’s wheelhouse.

Another problem: Jared Leto’s much-hyped performance as Joker is a major let-down. Required by Harley Quinn’s presence to  imbue the character with a sexual dimension to his unhinged menace, Leto acts more more like a tweaking drag queen.   

Still, Suicide Squad has its moments. Robbie is more up to the wild-card requirements of the role than Leto. Internet-troll punching bag Jai Courtney is actually quite funny as the beer-swilling Boomerang. Hernandez gives the character of Diablo more dimension that anyone had a right to expect. The movie’s circus-punk esthetic makes for a distinctive look. 

Suicide isn’t painless, but it’s not as bad as current buzz would have it.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing