There are dark forces at work in Midway City, and so it’s up to sharp-shooting assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), crazed ex-psychiatrist Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and a bunch of other “psychotics and freaks” to bring order out of chaos. The only trouble is, neither Deadshot nor the rest of his motley crew – which also counts Aussie thief Boomerang (Jai Courtney) man-eating monster Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and flame-throwing hoodlum El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) – particularly want to commit to the mission laid out for them. To bring the Squad to heel, Waller comes up with a few tactics. First, she injects small explosive devices into the anti-heroes’ necks – these can be detonated with a handy smartphone app if they step out of line (one of the film’s many nods to John Carpenter’s Escape From New York). That’s quite a roster of characters to introduce already, and we haven’t even described who the villains are or what they’re up to, much less the role the Joker (Jared Leto) plays in the whole scenario. We won’t go into detail about those matters here, since that would give away too much of the plot and, really, the movie itself doesn’t seem to fully understand what the villains’ motivations are. All we can say for sure is this: there’s a glowing white light in the middle of the city orbited by a nimbus of debris, while the streets are awash with an army of demonic goons who appear to talk backwards and have giant, throbbing blackberries (the fruit, not the mobile phone) where their heads should be. There’s a better film in Suicide Squad somewhere, trapped under a giant throbbing blackberry and desperate to get out. David Ayer has long specialised in action thrillers with a tough, unvarnished edge, whether he wrote them (Training Day, Street Kings) or directed them, too (End Of Watch, Fury). With Suicide Squad, his most mainstream film yet, he appears to be attempting to graft the trappings of a comic book movie onto a classic war film template. So instead of cigar-chewing all-American soldiers we have an international cast of metahumans; instead of a Bavarian castle we have a generic US city; instead of Nazis we have an army of fruity zombies. Like several other superhero team-up movies we’ve seen of late, Suicide Squad piles its basket high with characters and digressions, seemingly without any reason for them being along for the ride. The Joker – played here by Leto as a kind of cross between a James Cagney gangster and James Franco’s freakish Alien from Spring Breakers – cuts a slinky, disconcerting figure. Whether or not he was actually required by the plot – other than as a cameo from Harley Quinn’s past – is highly debatable. Likewise a few other faces from the DC universe, most of whom seem to have been thrown in as links to previous movies or those yet to appear in cinemas. An over-cooked plot with under-written villains is relatively easy to overlook for the first hour or so, largely thanks to the charisma of Ayer’s superbly-chosen cast. But the labyrinthine set-up really begins to tell in the second half, as the story descends into a miasma of flashing lights and conspicuously rushed-looking CGI. Ayer hasn’t really delved deep into the realms of the fantastical and the effects-driven before, and he doesn’t appear to attack it with much conviction here. The film’s central threat emerges as an ungainly, cavorting thing that looks like something out of Alex Proyas’ ill-advised fantasy throwback, Gods Of Egypt. Studio meddling? A case of too many eager fingers in the editing room? Rumours and stories already abound, but only the makers know for sure. Suicide Squad is out in UK cinemas on the 5th August.