Suicide Squad director shrugs off film's negative reviews

Will Smith (third from left) plays a sharpshooter named Deadshot in David Ayer's film

The director of comic book film Suicide Squad has shrugged off its bad reviews, saying he "made it for the fans".

"I love the movie and believe in it," David Ayer wrote on Twitter, calling it the "best experience of my life".

Several critics have slammed the movie, with Screen Daily bashing its "mediocre storytelling... reliance on ghastly CGI and overblown stylistic flourishes".

Yet the film - about villains forced to fight for good - got more love from Empire, who called it "a real hoot".

"Suicide Squad gives new life to DC's big-screen universe," wrote Dan Jolin in his four-star review.

According to The Guardian, the film - which stars Will Smith and Margot Robbie - "delivers a dense downpour of madness".

Critic Peter Bradshaw, however, was not alone in wishing it had "more fun and more lightness of touch".

"Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains and then doesn't know what to do with them," Todd McCarthy said in The Hollywood Reporter.

Digital Spy's Rosie Fletcher, meanwhile, said the film was "boring and unfunny", features "bland fights and shootouts" and is "not very good".

Leto 'unsettling' as Joker

Jared Leto's performance as The Joker - a role previously played on film by Jack Nicholson and the late Heath Ledger - got most of what praise the film has received.

According to Variety, the Oscar-winning actor "manage[s] to invent a version of the Joker every bit as unsettling as... Ledger's immortal incarnation".

Rolling Stone's Peter Travers, though, echoed a number of other critics' complaints in describing Leto's performance as "a glorified walk-on".

"The Joker, the most tantalizing character of all, slips in and out of the movie with barely more than a menacing smile," Us Weekly's Mara Reinstein wrote.

The film also features Jared Leto (right) as diabolical supervillain The Joker

Suicide Squad, which has its European premiere in London on Wednesday, currently has a 35% rating on reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

This has prompted one aggrieved fan to call for the site to be shut down for its alleged bias against movies from the DC Comics stable.

An online petition he set up has attracted more than 7,000 signatures since its launch on Tuesday.

The film, in which fashion model Cara Delevingne also appears as an archaeologist possessed by an evil spirit, is released in the UK and US on Friday.