The Suicide Squad (2021)

Let’s face it: writer/director David Ayers’s first attempt at a Suicide Squad movie was, at best, not very good. A confusing mess caused by far too much studio interference, the whole thing looked like an attempt by some studio heads to make their own version of Marvel/Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Ayers even recently disowned the film. That said, by a stroke of good fortune, Warner Brothers was able to hire Guardians writer/director James Gunn to make another Suicide Squad movie during a period where he had been fired by Disney over an outrage campaign led by people who disagreed with Gunn’s politics on Twitter. I won’t really get into that here, but Gunn has since been rehired by Disney to direct his own script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, so make of all that what you will.

In the meantime, we have The Suicide Squad, and it is very much a James Gunn movie.

Without saying too much, Gunn sets the tone for his movie in the opening scene, showing a new Task Force X including returning characters Harley Quinn (top billed Margot Robbie) and Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), hitting a beach on the fictional Caribbean island nation of Corto Maltese under the leadership of unadulterated good guy Col. Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman). Things go south quickly, but the mission goes on: get to the island’s capital city and destroy a building called “Jotenheim” where something called “Project Starfish” is under the supervision of a geneticist known as the Thinker (Peter Capaldi). Since this is Task Force X, nicknamed the Suicide Squad for a reason, the mission will not only not run smoothly, but the members of the Squad are not necessarily expected to come back alive from all this.

Now, Gunn did assemble a large team for this, and while he does an effective job giving even the most obscure members of the Squad some time to show off some character or display a weird superpower or both, his focus as far as new characters are concerned is primarily on a handful: Bloodsport (Idris Elba), a world-weary gun for hire with some fantastic killing skills; Peacemaker (John Cena), an ironically-named patriotic antihero type; Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior), a young woman who seems mostly harmless despite her skills controlling rats; the Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), a depressed man with a deadly polka-dot attack thanks to some unasked for genetic experimentation; and King Shark (voice of Sylvester Stallone), a human/shark hybrid who mostly eats things, isn’t very bright, and is the team’s primary muscle.

Now, Gunn has publicly stated he was given a lot of leeway to use all manner of DC characters and permission, he claimed, to be able to kill off as many as he wanted to. Truth be told, prior to seeing the movie, the only one I figured for certain was going to get out alive was Robbie’s Harley Quinn since she’s the breakout character from the first one, did get her own starring feature, and could theoretically get another one The rest? Let’s just say Gunn wracks up quite the body count and leave it at that, particularly since he specializes in killing off characters at some of the most unexpected times. The point is, even characters that seem important to the narrative on either side of the conflict can sometimes die suddenly, and deaths tend to be violent and bloody. Gunn got his start at Troma Pictures after all, and his sense of humor is often very visceral and messy. There’s a lot of blood and guts in this movie, and it’s mostly used for comedic effect. If anything, this is the sort of work Gunn makes when he’s not restrained by, say, Disney’s standards for Marvel movies. Warner Brothers and DC clearly do not have a problem with that level of violence and swearing.

But for all that Gunn has a lot of gory slapstick on display, he’s also able to give his characters a lot of empathy. Ratcatcher is particular is singled out as someone the audience can care for when her biggest flaw seems to be that she has trouble staying awake and can sleep quite deeply at inconvenient times. Polka-Dot Man is more pathetic than anything else, and for all Bloodsport doesn’t want to be a leader or even a good man, there’s still an undercurrent of reluctant heroism and compassion running through many of his actions. Gunn even manages to do a lot of good with the returning characters, particularly Flagg and Quinn, while Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller, running the show from the States, seems even more coldhearted in this one, and the previous movie showed her gunning down some random FBI agents for “knowing too much” at one point. And for all that everyone was cagey about whether this was a sequel or a reboot, the movie does treat the returning characters as if they already know each other and have a (mostly good) working relationship.

The bottom line is this movie is a lot of fun, very much in keeping with Gunn’s style–yes, he did give roles to his frequent collaborators Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, and his brother Sean plus a cameo to Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman–giving us a team of villains worth rooting for as they go through a mission that is equal parts crazy and emotional, where there were some good people and some bad people up to a lot of violent, funny stuff. DC fans, Gunn fans, and even fans of 70s exploitation films should have a blast with this one.

Grade: A-