Five years after David Ayer’s take on The Suicide Squad, we get a new, updated vision of the concept from Writer/Director James Gunn. Displaying the same deft humor and dazzling visual style he brought to the first two installments of “Guardians of the Galaxy”, Gunn creates THE SUICIDE SQUAD and something that’s been elusive for DC films, an enjoyable movie!
Margot Robbie is back in ferocious style as Harley Quinn, Joel Kinnaman returns as Colonel Rick Flag and Viola Davis is still tearing it up as their government boss.
But luckily for us and for Gunn, he’s also great a terrific and huge cast of Squad members. Idris Elba is excellent as Bloodsport, John Cena is hilariously profane as hulking meathead Peacemaker, Jai Courtney is still having fun as Boomerang and Flula Borg is great as Javelin.
King Shark (CGI’d Sylvester Stallone) Polka-Dot Man (excellent David Dastmalchian) and Ratcatcher all make the most use of their screen time, providing some drama along with the laughs.
I knew Gunn had everything right when he killed Pete Davidson’s character about five minutes into the film. Not since Steven Seagal died in the opening act of “Executive Decision” has an onscreen fatality been so welcome. Gunn has said that he felt that filling the borders of the film with obscure and unknown villains was in the true spirit of the comics. “There’s an innate tragic element to supervillains who aren’t even that good at being bad.” The opening scenes are the best demonstration I’ve ever seen of that philosophy. I found myself saying, “there’s a cool character. Oh, yep he’s dead now” and Gunn’s flippancy in doing so is admirable.
This time around, our collection of hair-trigger, insane psychopaths is dropped behind enemy lines on an island to find The Thinker (the hilariously unhinged Peter Capaldi) an evil scientist whose Project Starfish could end life on Earth as we know it. Only Gunn could realize Project Starfish so literally in a conclusion that’s as loaded with laughs as it is bloodshed.
Ayer’s earlier film version started off strong and ten trailed off into average territory after its opening hour, but Gunn loads characters and madness layer by layer, exploding the last 30 minutes into a non-stop, graphic, foul, funny, and suspenseful wrap up that blows more limbs off than a George Romero classic.
These are bad people, doing bad things.
On a VERY grand scale.
Cena describes his Peacemaker as a “douchebag Captain America”.
After you see this film, you’re built to enjoy the HBO/MAX series “Peacemaker” also created by Gunn and starring Cena. It’s damn funny, strange, and horrifically profane in all the right ways.
Which also serves as an apt description of this movie.
It’s as filthy and laugh-out-loud funny as “Deadpool”, but ten times more violent.
I had a hell of a lot of fun from start-to-finish.
As King Shark says: Nom-nom!
Or as Peacemaker so eloquently says: “I cherish peace with all my heart. I don’t care how many men, women and children I have to kill to get it”
Yep. Madness. THE SUICIDE SQUAD gets a B+.
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