The Suicide Squad Review

What a difference five years and a slightly different title can make. In 2016, Warner Bros released a half-thought-out hodgepodge of a movie called Suicide Squad. Although it was a financial success, it was also an absolute mess that left a sour taste in most mouths. The final film was edited and re-edited to the point of confusion, and audiences rejected its depiction of many of the characters. The credited director, David Ayer, continues to renounce it online (just as recently as last week) as a total distortion of his original concept. The film’s basic premise of a Black Ops team of B-list supervillains was an interesting one, but the 2016 Suicide Squad will always felt like a slow walk through a Hot Topic store. Flash forward a few years and in swoops writer/director James Gunn to rectify the problem. Armed with a clear and uncompromised vision of what to do with the concept and characters, Gunn has done the impossible and saved The Suicide Squad.

The new film follows the same setup as the 2016 installment, retains about four of its characters (including Margot Robbie’s chaotic Harley Quinn and Viola Davis’ no-nonsense leader Amanda Waller) and throws the rest away. This is a brand new team on a brand new mission. If they succeed, their prison sentence is reduced, if they fail, they die.

It truly is a blessing how little this movie has to do with its 2016 predecessor. This is an entirely separate movie, with its own style and attitude, and its own take on the characters. They are two entirely different films and thank god for that. Particularly refreshing is this new take on Harley. In the original film, Ayer hyper-sexualized her to an absurd degree. Here, she’s a human being, equal to any of the other members of the team. It’s great. From the tongue-in-cheek mocking of its absurd cast of comic book characters to its killer soundtrack The Suicide Squad honestly shares more DNA with Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films than it does other DC outings. 

Similar to Guardians, The Suicide Squad has an eclectic and incredible selection of soundtrack songs. This is apparently one of Gunn’s strongest suits as a filmmaker because the music in the movie is perfect. From a hilarious and shocking use of a Jim Caroll Band Punk classic to golden age standards to one of my personal favorite Decemberists songs, there isn’t a skip on this playlist. I greatly look forward to the soundtrack’s release. 

I’ve always had a personal soft spot for James Gunn. The filmmaker started off small (really small) at the infamous B-movie studio Troma, before moving on to slightly more polished (but still grungy as hell) indie movies of his own, like Slither and Super. He was subsequently Disney’s biggest gamble to date, as they made the completely left-field choice to bring him on to helm the billion-dollar Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, where he seamlessly blended his B-movie roots with the polished storytelling of a major studio franchise. The only hang-up fans have about his shift to big-budget Hollywood movies is that he wasn’t able to hold on to his Hard-R rated sensibilities while he was working for Disney. Warner Bros, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care and has given him full reign to make The Suicide Squad as gory as he wants. And boy did her take them up on that offer. This movie is definitely not for kids. 

Tonally, the film takes its cues from classic war movies, where we go on a high-stakes mission with a team of mercenaries, each with a different backstory and motivation. Gunn, however, has subverted this style by infusing it with the chaotic whimsy leftovers from his days in exploitation cinema. The result is a wild ride of a movie, unlike most other things I’ve seen. There is a lot of humor and borderline slapstick brutality, but there’s also a fair amount of heart at its core. Clearly, the filmmaker cares about these characters, even the ones he violently kills for a laugh. Of course, the downside to the war movie vibe he’s going for is in its pacing.

As with most movies of this nature, The Suicide Squad gets slightly bogged down in the middle as the characters prepare for battle. We get a little too in the weeds with their plan and the individual backstories of each character, leaving the movie to slow down its previously high-energy pace. Of course, this downtime doesn’t last long, as it is followed up with an incredible fight sequence from Robbie’s Quinn.

For the most part, the characters are there to be jokes, as Gunn has gone out of his way to pick some of DC Comics’ most ridiculous D-tier villains to highlight in the film. Seriously, we get appearances from Polka Dot Man, Calendar Man, and Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, just to name a few. What’s especially fun about this aspect of the film is how high-profile the casting is. We get A-list actors appearing as the stupidest characters. Some of them end up being cannon-fodder cameos, while others wind up becoming protagonists. A close look at the marketing does spoil a good deal of the film’s surprises, there are still several unexpected deaths and scenarios you wouldn’t see coming, which is good for a movie that’s going for shocks.

The Suicide Squad is a bloody, bizarre, and risky take on Task Force X. Like most big swings, it doesn’t all totally come together, but I have to applaud the gutsiness of Gunn’s attempt nonetheless.