Harley Quinn is cheekily evil, meaning that her character has to walk a very fine line between entertainingly and obnoxious. She has to be able to annoy other characters without annoying the audience... Some writers play it safe, and opt to make her plain badass all the time, ignoring the cheekier aspects of her personality. Other writers, who've read wikipedia articles and think they're experts, like, say, the monsters that shat out Batman vs. Superman, prefer to think they can write anything they've heard about and go full obnoxious without considering the fact that it's their job to bring life to a character, not the name on the script. So the only character recognizable at a glance was one that I ended up hating.
The characters looked more like the Rainbow Six than supervillains working for parole. I mean, I guess it's alright that everyone's in plain clothes and shit, but seriously, every character has their own very specific design and self-branding, you should be able to pick them out as a glance. Had I never been told who the characters were going to be, I would've picked out Harley, Deadshot, and maybe Katana if I could wrap my head around why the girl I've only seen briefly in some corners of the JL universe is suddenly rolling with these motherfuckers. That's right, if I wasn't told Killer Croc was in this fucking movie, I wouldn't have seen him.
That's another point. When A GIANT FUCKING ALLIGATORMUN is difficult to pick out at a glance, you have fucking problems with your fucking design choices. He looks like a naked ninja turtle, or a generic burned-face man. He could've been Bane, judging from the fact that newer designs seem to be giving him less and less of a mask with each iteration. (Cyberpunk-libre gasmask thing, to Balaclava with paint on, to crabmouth thing with a little strap for your head, and now just a burnt face with pipes probably attached to somewhere. Seems like a natural enough progression.) Hell, the Dark Souls protagonist could've shanked some up and coming rap star and took his clothes to blend in with society. I mean, look at him, I honestly believe that's what happened! I bet you could make that exact face in the Dark Souls character thingy and nobody would be able to tell, honestly. Maybe they wouldn't have this kind of problem if they weren't opposed to colors that aren't gray and brown, but DC these days is far too edgy for that kinda shit.
Jared Jay was pretty good. A very well executed version of something that wasn't set up as well as it could be. He had an amazing presence and was in-character as fuck, but something about it just felt empty, and I'm not sure why... Maybe it was because he was dressed more like Killer Croc than Killer Croc, but maybe that's just contributing to it. He was a cringy spastic power rangers villain, but I want to feel like the part of this movie I enjoyed the most was actually for a good reason, because I was kinda rooting for it up till now...
As an action movie, it's fine, it's fun to watch most of the time, but Harley is annoying, and there's other frustrating things about it. Just... This actress, and the writers behind her, managed to make this character more obnoxious than a voice actress using a high squeaky voice and a vaudeville accent during that character's debut as a sidekick. Granted, the first Harley was well executed and not annoying, but christ, these guys had all the time and resources, creative liberties up the ass, and they still managed to fuck it up, despite having so many more things going for them than their predecessors. Not in a way that makes a bad movie, but definitely in a way that makes you cringe at the amount of effort they put into some things that failed utterly, and feel sad at the end that it wasn't above-average.
