Amanda Waller (Davis) is a top government official with a plan. There are an awful lot of super-powered villains clogging death rows and insane asylums. So why not instead use them as an entirely expendable strike force to fight even greater villainies? Assembling and training this collection of freaks, psychopaths, monsters and crazies will be hard work (though inserting a micro-bomb implant into their skulls certainly helps). But with powerful threats facing the world, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Yes, this is a comic-book-knockoff of The Dirty Dozen, with a whole bunch of second-tier baddies teamed up together for yet another attempt at cashing in on the success of Marvel’s Avengers: the expert assassin Deadshot (Smith), the crazed ex-psychiatrist Harley Quinn (Robbie), the rage-filled cannibalistic reptilian Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the flame-wielding El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and the ultra-bogan murderer Boomerang (Jai Courtney). There’s also space for Jared Leto’s deeply disturbed Joker and a couple of other links to the emerging DC movie universe.

Tying this all together is the task of David Ayer, previously writer of Training Day and director of such intense dramas as Fury and End of Watch. So expect the mayhem to be wild and frequent, the action incredible, the characters strange and outlandish and the plot... well, there’s probably a plot too.