THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021)
Updated: Dec 12, 2022
An Outrageous Action Comedy that Justifies its Central Premise
Grade: A
**Spoiler Alert!!**
The first Suicide Squad movie, based on the DC Comics team, followed a group of convicted supervillains tasked by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) with carrying out a deadly mission that might result in their deaths but would shave years of their sentences if they succeeded and survived. Released in 2016, the film divided fan opinions and was torn to pieces by critics for its story, execution, and uneven tone. Now comes its follow-up, which is directed by James Gunn, the mastermind behind Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies. In those films, he combined an equally silly premise (another group of misfits, this one including a raccoon and a talking tree, team up to save the universe) with a winning combination of side-splitting humor, heartfelt moments, crazy violence, and dazzling visuals. Now he has done it again, only this time it’s with an “R” rating, meaning the madness is being cranked up to 11 in one of the most wildly entertaining movies in the DC Extended Universe.
The Suicide Squad wastes no time getting started. It introduces some new characters, including an anthropomorphic Weasel and a weapons expert played by Michael Rooker, and reintroduces three characters from the first film: Captain Boomerang (Jai Courney), Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and the lovably psychotic Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). The story almost immediately dispatches this group with gleeful abandon in a violent shootout on a beach, leaving Flag and Quinn as the only survivors.
At the same time, a separate team comes ashore on another part of the beach. This group consists of Bloodsport (Idris Elba), another weapons expert with daddy issues; Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), a failed experiment of a villain with mommy issues; Peacemaker (John Cena), a guy who loves peace and will kill anyone in order to achieve it; Ratcatcher II (Daniela Melchior), a lady who can control rats and whose father, the first Ratcatcher, is played by Taika Waititi; and King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), a humanoid shark with a limited vocabulary, not too dissimilar from another famous comic book character directed by James Gunn.
It is revealed that this group has been assigned by Waller to infiltrate the island nation of Corto Maltese and destroy all evidence of a mysterious experiment known as Project Starfish. As they draw closer to their destination, they learn that the project is bigger and more horrifying than they could have imagined…and soon a gigantic, cyclopean starfish is stomping through the capital city of Corto Maltese, destroying everything in its path.
Humor permeates nearly every scene in The Suicide Squad, whether it be through the obvious silliness of the characters, the situations they find themselves in, or the handling of the violence. The latter is where some of the film’s best comedy comes from, as we are invited to laugh at shocking moments that we would never find funny in real life. For example, a bad guy being torn in half is a horrific sight to see. But when that act is being performed by a humanoid shark, it is possible to both scream and laugh.
Unlike the first Suicide Squad, just about everything in this movie is done extremely well. The action is well-staged and spectacular, with shootouts, hand-to-hand fights, and destruction galore. The visuals are impressive, especially one scene where the characters approach the secret lab through a torrential downpour. The cast all put up fine performances, with Margot Robbie once again making the character of Harley Quinn her own. And the screenplay does a magnificent job of eliciting sympathy for the characters. Seriously, you know a movie is doing something right when it makes you care for a humanoid shark and the Polka Dot Man.
One of the movie’s biggest strengths is how the screenplay juggles different tones throughout the runtime, sometimes on a moment-by-moment basis. One minute you’ll be laughing your head off when Polka Dot Man shoots explosive polka dots at an enemy, and the next you’ll be gasping when this causes bombs to go off, destroying a large building. One minute you’ll be cringe in disgust when a legion of rats goes on the offensive; the next you will shed a tear when you see Ratcatcher II experience a flashback of her and her late father. One minute you’ll go “Awww!” as Harley spends a romantic afternoon with the President of Corto Maltese; the next you’ll scream when she shoots him. All these tonal shifts never make the movie feel uneven; on the contrary, they demonstrate how a movie can supply several different emotions at once. In this way, The Suicide Squad is never boring, as there is almost always something to react to on-screen.
If there is one problem with The Suicide Squad, it may be that the superhero genre has covered similar ground before. This is thanks in large part to James Gunn himself, who perfected the concept of characters on the wrong side of the law coming together like a family and doing what’s right in his Guardians of the Galaxy films. But really, that is not a big deal here, because The Suicide Squad works. When you see it, you will laugh, cry, cheer, gasp, and sometimes do a combo of those things. The Suicide Squad is one of the most outrageous superhero movies ever made, and it is definitely worth a look.
Director: James Gunn
Screenplay: James Gunn (Based on characters owned and published by DC)
Producers: Charles Roven, Peter Safran
Cast: Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn), Idris Elba (Robert DuBois/Bloodsport), John Cena (Christopher Smith/Peacemaker), Joel Kinnaman (Col. Rick Flag), Sylvester Stallone (Voice of Nanaue/King Shark), Viola Davis (Amanda Waller), Jai Courney (Captain Boomerang), David Dastmalchian (Abner Krill/Polka Dot Man), Daniela Melchior (Cleo Cazo/Ratcatcher II), Michael Rooker (Brian Durlin/Savant), Pete Davidson (Blackguard)
Rated: R (for strong violence and gore, language throughout, some sexual references, drug use and brief graphic nudity)
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