Movie Review: The Suicide Squad (2021)

The Suicide Squad (2021) written and directed by James Gunn

While on an involuntary sabbatical from The Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn took on a DC Comics property that involves a group of ne'er-do-wells who more or less inadvertently save the world. The DC group is much darker than the Guardians, as can be seen by their name--The Suicide Squad. The squad is recruited out of a prison for supervillains and goes on secret government assignments to get their sentences reduced. An explosive chip is put in their heads to keep them from just going off and causing their own sort of mayhem (rather than the government sanctioned mayhem). Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), director of the Squad, puts together a group to attack the South American island Corto Maltese. Their beach assault is a horrible disaster with most of the team getting killed in the opening sequence of the movie. This first team is actually a cover for a second team that is after the same objective. Since all the Cortese military is at the other beach, the second team has a relatively easy time making it to the interior of the country. Through a combination of smarts, violence, and mayhem, they might just accomplish their mission. Maybe with some help from one or two survivors of the botched invasion!

The movie leans into the ridiculous premise with its over the top characterizations (a natural place for Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie)). One of the villains is King Shark (voice by Sylvester Stallone), an eight-foot humanoid shark that's maybe a genetic experiment, maybe an ancient shark deity. His main interest is eating and he's not particular about whether his snack is friend or foe. Most of the characters are unfamiliar, giving the filmmakers a lot of freedom to develop them and to surprise the audience in delightful ways. The R rating is very strong--again, the makers have a ridiculous amount of gore and violence throughout the movie. Also the body count is very high, and not just the no-name characters in the background. Death is a frequent visitor to the Suicide Squad.

This movie is at least a million times better than the 2016 disaster.

Recommended, if you have the stomach for the gore and the moral ambiguity.

Movie Review: Suicide Squad (2016)

Suicide Squad (2016) written and directed by David Ayer

In response to the ever increasing threat of meta-humans like Superman, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) wants to put together a team of super-villains as a potential response to take down those over-powered beings. She gets the government to sign on and develops the Suicide Squad, a group of B-list villains who are incarcerated in Bell Reve, Louisiana. How much of a villain are you if you are involuntarily in jail for one or more life sentences? The Squad has a job to do almost right away because an ancient and powerful bad guy has shown up in Midway City. After injecting their necks with explosive devices (a way to guarantee they'll behave), the Squad is sent in with a bunch of soldiers to get a key asset out of the city. Things don't go as planned, naturally.

The star characters of the film are Deadshot (Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). Deadshot never misses with whatever gun he's using and he's spent his life killing for money. He has a kid who he doesn't see anymore because he was caught by Batman. Deadshot hopes to get stuff for his daughter (the best education possible, etc.) in return for being part of the Squad. Will Smith underplays the character, showing a surprising lack of charisma. His heart doesn't seem to be in it. Margot Robbie is more fun and more sympathetic as the deranged manic pixie dream girl Harley Quinn, a.k.a. the Joker's girlfriend. She gets the best lines and has more style than everyone else. She's not as over-the-top enough as her comic book version but perhaps they decided to dial her down for a live-action portrayal. Her backstory is a little inconsistent and incoherent which drags her down a bit too.

The other characters are fairly bland, and that weirdly includes Jared Leto's Joker. This Joker seems more like a mid-level crime boss with occasional flairs of derangement and an obsession with Harley. He isn't funny or scary or threatening, just infatuated with Harley. He lacks the panache found in any other depiction of the Joker.* Other characters have hints of depth but not enough to engage the audience beyond the level of a summer popcorn blockbuster.

And that's basically what this movie is--a throw-away summer action blockbuster. Plenty of actions scenes are thrown in but at least half of them don't make much sense. Twists and surprises are predictable and unexciting. The jokes aren't particularly funny though they'd probably work better in a crowded theater than by yourself at home. The production design is detailed and well-crafted but not original or distinctive.

I can't recommend this movie.



*For those keeping score, this makes a third wasted super-villain for 2016 (the others being BVS:DOJ's Lex Luthor and X-Men's Apocalypse). I guess Captain America: Civil War saved itself by not having a super-villain!

Book Review: Suicide Squad Vol. 1 by A. Glass et al.

Suicide Squad Volume 1: Kicked in the Teeth written by Adam Glass with art by Federico Dallocchio, Clayton Henry, and others

Belle Reve is a maximum security prison for supervillains. Government official Amanda Waller is head of Task Force X, a program that lets the villains go on secret missions to reduce their sentences. To keep them from going awol, the selected villains have nanite bombs in their necks, hence the team's nickname, the Suicide Squad. They do the dirty work that superheroes and legitimate government agencies would never do or even condone.

The first mission teams up Deadshot, Harley Quinn, El Diablo, Voltaic, Black Spider, and King Shark. They are sent to a stadium full of technologically-zombified people. They need to find the one person suspected of having a cure and to kill the other 59,999. Not exactly a job for Superman, eh?And the job needs to be done in under six hours or else the nanite bombs will blow.

Along the way the group has casualties, so the roster changes slightly every couple of stories. Some of the supervillains I'd never heard of and definitely look as if they should be wearing red shirts when they show up. Harley Quinn and Deadshot are the stars and get the most character development. Harley's back story (i.e., how the Joker turned Arkham Asylum-psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel into a love-sick maniac) is given in some detail, which is the most interesting part of this book.

The storytelling tries to ride an ambiguous moral edge. Some of the villains make an effort not to hurt innocent people but the prevailing attitude is "do whatever is expedient to get the job done." That includes killing innocent people and betraying allies, all in the name of getting shorter sentences or not getting heads blow off (which does happen). The violence is grimly graphic, including a whole story of the team being tortured. The book also falls into the comic book trope of overly sexualizing all the female characters (except Amanda Waller).

So the book isn't kid friendly, which isn't necessarily a problem. But the art with its graphic violence and chesty women seems aimed at teenage boys rather than adults. And the main villain (who zombified the stadium among other crimes) is basically a rip-off of Marvel Comics' Hydra. Other than Harley Quinn's back story, I didn't find much in the story that was interesting or original.

The movie just released as this review is posted looks less sexualized (except for poor Harley), less gruesome, and more fun if the trailer is accurate:



 Killer Croc is a smart substitute for King Shark. We are a long way from a walking shark looking plausible in a live action film. And Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn may actually upstage the Joker, which would be an amazing accomplishment. It is weird that the heavy-handed and sober DC movie universe is getting a lighter, more fun treatment by focusing on villains. I'm interested in seeing this, which is more than I could say about Batman v Superman.