The Suicide Squad is a direct follow up to the 2016 version of Suicide Squad directed by David Ayer. This time around, WB scouted James Gunn to helm the project and boyyyyy does the decision pay off! If there’s anything that James Gunn can do, is get a bunch of unknown misfit characters and make them absolutely memorable. The R rating of this film also lends itself into zany comic booky gore that will surely have you entertained(if you like that sort of thing of course). Spoilers from here.
If you haven’t heard of the original Suicide Squad, then let me tell you, it was critically panned by both the audience and the professional reviewers. That movie was full of messy editing, horrible dialogue, uninteresting characters all mixed into one big goofy spotify “top 100 hits” playlist. A whole mess with no singular vision and no identity of its own. Needless to say, the bar for this feature of The Suicide Squad was set very very low, and it didn’t need much for it to be considered the better movie of the two. Not only did The Suicide Squad prove itself to be way better than the first movie, but it excels as a comic book movie, period. The movie offers a fresh set of unknown characters with ridiculous powers and even more ridiculous personalities. You can tell Gunn was going for something super campy and over the top, staying true to the craziness of a comic book story. The movie knows its ridiculous and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and Gunn was clearly given full reign.
I’ve got to say, the cast is brilliant! They brought back Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, and Joel Kinnaman to reprise their roles from the first film and added Idris Elba, John Cena, and one of my personal favorite additions Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2. There are plenty more characters but some aren’t on screen long enough for me to really get into them. Every character has their moment to shine in this,(as far as the core team goes). The characters are all different and there is never a dull moment. This movie honestly also has one of my favorite Harley Quinn moments of all time! Her character strengths are played up to a satisfying degree. The action scenes are stylish and full of lots of flair with over the top depictions of gore and violence worthy of the R rating. One of the best parts of this film though for me is that most of the jokes land.
So, where do its faults lay? Well, whenever you have a lot of characters in a movie, it’s easy to feel like you want “more” out of them. The movie definitely points you in the right direction of the characters you’re “supposed” to care about, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t more left to be desired. This rings true for me in this case. Also, there was one specific character’s death in this that made me mad, only because it was played off as a comedic thing. The movie didn’t play when they said they would make use of these characters and their deaths.
The Suicide Squad is fun and worth the watch for any comic book fans out there looking for a great time! It’s a hit for me and did it’s job well.
The Suicide Squad is now out in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
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