The Suicide Squad (2021)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
James Gunn makes the leap from Disney and Marvel, and puts his unique spin on relaunching The Suicide Squad as something worth caring about for fans of the DC Extended Universe.
Margot Robbie was born to play Harley Quinn. Easily best in show here with a strong, largely impressive ensemble of characters around her.
Gunn cleans up so many gaffes and unforced errors from the 2016 film, spiking in humor, jaw-dropping violence and surprises, and an investment in characters which allow this to potentially spin-off in a number of different directions.
NO
This isn’t the PG-13 Suicide Squad from 2016. This is the most violent, blood-soaked superhero movie to date and absolutely not for younger kids. It earns that R for a reason.
Veers into self-importance at times, which goes with the bravado of the film, but can always become exhausting for those not fully invested in the story, film, and characters.
I think it is more than fair to say that despite Marvel growing potentially too large with too many things to keep track of, there is at least a cohesiveness to their projects. DC Extended Universe has no through-line or identity. Are they generating “Hard R”-rated comedic bloodbaths, or are they staying with a more family-friendly style of storytelling?
OUR REVIEW
After enduring the horrendous Suicide Squad film in 2016, critics and fans alike began wondering whether the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) was ultimately an idea worth saving. As Marvel consistently wowed audiences and critics alike, and banked billions of dollars in revenue, DC seemed to be buckling under the pressure of competition.
Revisiting the 2016 superhero battle royale that was Suicide Squad, you see that the project was perhaps just to big for David Ayer to pull off. With a dozen new characters, some of whom were positioned to spin-off into numerous films and sub-franchises within the DCEU, by the time the film was released, the idea of more Suicide Squad movies was an underwhelming proposition.
Margot Robbie saw potential in her portrayal of Harley Quinn, one of the few bright lights found in the poorly plotted 2016 film. Stepping into the role of producer, she continued pushing for Quinn to earn a standalone cinematic adventure. And after five years of development, 2020’s Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) saw Robbie’s evolving creation of Quinn, along with the film’s intensified violence, edgy comedy, and enthusiastic “R” rating, bring favorable attention to her as a bankable character and property.
And so, in 2021 we are doing Suicide Squad over. Warner Bros. has said that this new incarnation of The Suicide Squad (note the addition of “The” to the title) is not a sequel to the 2016 film, although a handful of characters carry over into this film that we met previously. And for this restart, Warner Bros. poached James Gunn from their competitors over at Marvel - Gunn’s well-received Guardians of the Galaxy films giving him the experience needed to roll out an ensemble of superheroes with comedy underpinnings
What we have with this new iteration of The Suicide Squad is a good enough film to collectively manifest the 2016 debacle never happened. Gunn made the wise decision to avoid references to the PG-13 film of the past, correcting so many of the wrongs that prevented Ayer’s film from even getting out of the starting blocks. In its place: a gory, hyperviolent, gallows humor action film which is not without problems, but largely serves as an entertaining romp of carnage, comedy, and bravado.
With the restraints off, Gunn embraces excess straightaway. Pulled together by intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), a new Task Force X (a/k/a Suicide Squad) is assembled with violent inmates charged with descending onto the small South American island of Corto Maltese. A mysterious lab known as Jötunheim is located there and houses the top secret “Project Starfish.” Waller is hoping her team can destroy the facility, as well as the project, before a newly installed hostile government can unleash the project on an unsuspecting world.
Gunn has a blast playing with all these characters, as well as the unfortunate souls who open the film. Under his control, The Suicide Squad becomes an over-the-top, unbridled free-for-all. He does allow each significant character a chance to tell their story and let us connect to their journey. This also proves to be a substantial improvement from the 2016 film, where Ayer took nearly half his film introducing us to each Suicide Squad member individually.
A first slate of Task Force X’ers may not even make it past the first five minutes, which gives way to a secondary team of Task Force X members who will become the focal point for the film.
Among the B-team: Bloodsport (Idris Elba), skilled in high-tech weaponry; Peacemaker (John Cena), a brutish muscle-bound defender of peace, at any costs; and Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), the daughter of the now-deceased Ratcatcher (Taika Waititi), who has the ability to summon all rats to do her bidding.
They are also joined by the Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), who uses the anger of being mistreated as a child by his mother (Lynne Ashe) to fuel his release of flying polka dots that decimate anything in their path. And then there is King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), who is half-man, half-shark, speaks in singular words, and is trying to understand how to make friends and not see them as “Nom-nom.”
The main focus centers around the B-team becoming the A-team and eventually connecting up with Quinn and Col. Flag (Joel Kinnaman), who emerges from the first advance on Corto Maltese intact. As they work to destroy Jötunheim and understand the otherworldly dangers inherent in “Project Starfish,” their planning and scheming can only be undone by their own internal fights and squabbles.
Gunn’s screenplay is simple in set-up but chock full of ideas - some of which he never fully realizes.
Jötunheim has connections to Nazi Germany. Corto Maltese has freedom fighters ready to fight to take back over a government having just fallen to a successful coup. Waller has fallen out of favor with her staff. An underdeveloped villain known as The Thinker (Peter Capaldi) slows the film’s energy down and the entire logic around “Project Starfish” might raise some questions.
But unmistakably, The Suicide Squad is full of style and bombast, with certain action sequences fantastic in layout and execution. Perhaps the best of a series of action scenes comes with Robbie’s Harley Quinn fighting her way to freedom after being captured by the Corto Maltesian government. Robbie is a natural playing Quinn - her accent, look, timing, and playfulness, coupled with a sinister, diabolical hair-trigger emotion again proves dynamic in execution.
The violence is notable - not just because of how much there is but also because of how graphic it is. The Suicide Squad is downright gruesome at times - from faces shot clean off to decapitations to blood splatters and buckets of blood and guts flying all over the place. Elements of body horror even occur and we even find Gunn paying tribute to the Alien franchise. While I may never understand why extreme violence is always acceptable in American cinema when played for laughs, I’m not sure how prepared kids and families will be for just how many things explode, die, splatter the camera, and are eviscerated on screen.
Bloodletting acknowledged, Gunn’s youthful indulgences are far less reigned in here than with his Guardians films, and nothing feels all that novel, original, or new. However, for recalibrating and restoring a massively expensive investment for Warner Bros. into something that feels like we are seeing it for the first time…
Mission accomplished.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Viola Davis, Daniela Melchior, David Dastmalchian, Peter Capaldi, Alice Braga, Lynne Ashe, Michael Rooker, Pete Davidson, Nathan Fillion, Sean Gunn, Flula Borg, Mayling Ng, Taika Waititi, Steve Agee, Jennifer Holland, Tinashe Kajese, Juan Diego Botto, Joaquín Cosío, Storm Reid, Julio Ruiz.
Director: James Gunn
Written by: James Gunn
Based on the comic book series “Suicide Squad” by John Ostrander
Release Date: August 5, 2021
Warner Bros./HBO Max