The Suicide Squad is the new James Gunn-directed soft reboot of the franchise. It exists solely to correct the many, many wrongs that the original film had. Everything about this film is substantially better than the original, which is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The first change that is implemented in this film is having the team actually live up to their name. There is an all star cast, most of whom are barely in the film and all get murdered in hilarious fashion. This happens right at the beginning of the movie and sets the tone perfectly! I like having actual stakes where it’s clear that characters can die in the blink of an eye. In every other superhero movie they always struggle with creating stakes by making their heroes too strong and overpowered, but The Suicide Squad corrects this problem with ease.
The main group which we follow consists of Bloodsport, played by Idris Elba, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, Peacemaker played by John Cena, Polka Dot-man played by David Dastmalchian, Ratcatcher played by Daniela Melchior, Rick Flagg played by Joel Kinnaman, and my personal favorite, King Shark who is voiced by Sylvester Stallone. There are a lot more characters who are only in the film briefly and really aren’t worth going through. Is this group of characters really better than the original? Yes, in literally every way possible. Their dialogue is much funnier and the absurdist situations they are in definitely made me chuckle a few times. The performances are more consistent and just better in general and the chemistry between characters was much more believable.
Some of these characters are given dramatic backstories but these are handled much better than in the original film, but they still leave a lot to be desired. The primary one is Bloodsport’s relationship with his daughter, which seems to be poking fun at the abysmal development of the similar relationship between Deadshot and his daughter from the original. But the only real change was that they just yelled at each other. An improvement? Yes, but it still felt very surface level. The only other character who had backstory in the same fashion was Ratcatcher, as she flashes back to growing up with her heroin addicted father a few times. The problem is these scenes are so forced into the movie and feel totally disconnected from the plot of the film. While I appreciate Gunn’s effort to focus on fewer characters’ backstories, neither of these payoff in any meaningful way. It would be much better to have no backstory at all for these characters and instead focus on the relationships between the teammates.
All that being said, you could compare anything to Suicide Squad from 2016 and find positives because that movie is THAT bad. The Suicide Squad has been met with great success and it seems that most people are really enjoying it, which is great! I’m really glad James Gunn was given this opportunity and I appreciate the smaller roles he gave to Nathan Fillion and Michael Rooker as homages to their presence in his filmography. But this film is not amazing, in fact I’d say it’s pretty dull. While it feels foolish to say that about a film where the climax involves an enormous starfish kaiju, it just wasn’t exciting at a certain point. The film takes the Suicide Squad schtick as far as it can go, but ultimately it can only reach a certain point before it gets old. The most consistently funny joke in the film was Polka-Dot Man’s seeing everyone as his mother, it made for some really fun visual comedy. King Shark, who fills in the giant CGI character role, looks really good and the comedic timing on his character was masterful. It was the kind of thing where it could have been really overdone, but Gunn knows exactly when to take focus away from him.
There are some interesting choices with the cinematography for the film, in particular a fight scene between John Cena and Joel Kinnaman which is reflected in Peacemaker’s helmet. There were also some really fun and stylized shots scattered throughout the film, but looking back, the helmet one is the only interesting shot that I remember. The costumes are much improved from the last film as well, despite its painfully hilarious Oscar win in that category. I liked Harley Quinn’s costume a lot more, Bloodsport looks badass and Peacemaker looks comically stupid, and Polka-Dot man looks perfectly lame. It was all very colorful and vivacious, which was a clear way to separate it from its predecessor.
The next obvious upgrade from the original Suicide Squad film is the soundtrack’s utilization. The music in this, while still excessive, worked much better and actually using more than 5 seconds of a song allowed them to create an aesthetic along with the movie. I wish that they had some story-telling purpose for the music, like it could’ve been funny for one of the members to have a superpower related to sound, or have it playing through their earpieces and Amanda Waller is forcing them to listen to it. There are possibilities to make it pertinent that I would have appreciated more than just the excessive licensed music, but it wasn’t distracting and they certainly fit their scenes well.
As far as the DCEU goes this is definitely one of the better films, but that’s not saying much. Aquaman, Joker, and Shazam are all better than this film. It was fun and had a lot of jokes I laughed at but also a lot I didn’t laugh at. I think this was good as a Suicide Squad movie could be, and I’ll definitely watch it again at some point. Looking into the review mirror with this film, it is undeniably memorable and absurd it was just not for me. I’ll give The Suicide Squad a 4 out of 10.
The Review Mirror 