So the early reviews of Suicide Squad are out aaaaaannnnnnddddd…

Critics aren’t loving what they’re seeing.  Forrest Wickman and David Canfield over at Slate.com offer a mix of critical reactions to the film:

Here’s What Critics Have to Say About Suicide Squad

Over on Rottentomatoes.com, the film is scoring a not very good 33% positive among critics (24 of 48 critics so far have enjoyed the film).

Reading through some of the negative reviews, the main thing I’m getting from the critics is that the film presents far too much in too messy a fashion.

I suppose that makes sense.  The film is a team movie and it presents many of these characters for the very first time, though it appears they do so at the expense of a tighter storyline.

While negative, these same critics offer praise for Margot Robbie (who plays Harley Quinn) and Will Smith (who portrays Deadshot).  There also seems to be a general consensus that Jaret Leto’s Joker was both a cameo performance and ultimately extraneous to the story.

I haven’t seen the film so I obviously have no opinion one way or another.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

I find myself in the curious position not unlike many who were predisposed to not like Batman v Superman.  In the case of BvS, I saw only one film directed by Zach Snyder before that one, Dawn of the Dead, and therefore came into the film with far fewer negatives than others who had seen -and not enjoyed- more of his films.

With Suicide Squad’s director David Ayer, I have seen more of his works and, frankly, his career has been kind of hit and miss for me.  He’s written some good works (especially Training Day) but his two films previous to this one, 2014’s Fury and Sabotage, were to my mind a) only ok and b) a real missed opportunity.

Of these two films, the one I most looked forward to was Sabotage and, based on the trailers, found the And Then There Were None concept applied to testosterone fueled uber-agressive drug hunting cops an intriguing idea…but after a decent start the film simply didn’t have much of a payoff, IMHO.

Fury, as I said above, was in my mind a decent film but when all was said and done it didn’t really add all that much to the voluminous WWII film genre, despite some great effects and for the most part very good acting.

I will see Suicide Squad, though I’m not sure if I get a chance to do so in the theaters.  At this point I want to catch Star Trek Beyond and Jason Bourne and its been hard to find the free time to see one of those films, much less all three.

We’ll see.