The Suicide Squad review

I enjoyed the original Suicide Squad. In retrospect I was probably too generous in my review, but what I wrote reflects my feeling at the time. It's true that it has a lot of issues, but somehow those issues didn't stop me from enjoying the movie. With the news that James Gunn was attached to this one, I think everyone expected it to be much better than the first. Having just watched The Suicide Squad in the cinema, my opinion is that it is objectively better than it's predecessor.

Well, perhaps "objectively" is a stretch, but to me this one really felt far more stylish and creative than the original. Visually it was brighter and more colourful, but at the same time the humor felt darker - a juxtaposition that I think worked very well. It re-used many of the same beats as the first, but often did them better. The story felt less muddled, the protagonists more sympathetic.

So perhaps it's just my imagination that it felt like something was missing? I don't know what it is, but I just didn't feel as invested as I expected to. I don't want anyone to read too much into that because the truth is that I was in a funk the last couple of days so I wasn't in the best mindset when I walked into the cinema. But if these reviews have a purpose at all, it is to allow me to put down my thoughts and feelings, and this was one of them.

Anyway. The movie has some great visual moments, the story worked, the action was good, there wasn't a weak performance to be seen, and the humor pretty much all landed for me. Interestingly the more I think about the movie the more I appreciate some of the small details. This might be one to watch again sooner rather than later.


Overall I think I'm going to err on the side of generosity and give it an 8/10. If nothing else it's nice to watch a different type of superhero movie that, unlike all the "deconstructions of the genre" that you see running around these days, doesn't look down on the idea of superheroes.




#####SPOILER WARNING#####
After watching the movie I realised... do you see the star in the background of the poster? The poster is a spoiler! THE POSTER IS A SPOILER!


I didn't want to bog down the review talking about this, but I am curious about what it was that I felt was missing - assuming there was a legitimate reason for me to feel that. I wonder if I just wasn't feeling too invested was because the characters didn't get fleshed out very much until rather late in the movie? Or maybe it was because so many characters died at the start? That initial fakeout with everyone dying might have made me unconciously wary to let myself care about the characters as I now had the sense they might be disposeable? I don't know.

I guess it made sense for such a dark movie, but I did feel like there was just too much death. Squad members, soldiers, antagonists, civilians, freedom fighters; people died, and died easily, with little consquence or fanfare. Life felt cheap. Again, maybe that was a factor? Maybe it's hard to care much about what happens in a movie that's so nihilistic at times? I especially have a hard time with the scene where the Squad kills all those freedom fighters. Yes, it was stylish and funny and I enjoyed it, but also it bothers me. It feels so avoidable; they were obviously not soldiers (well, obvious to us, perhaps less so to the Squad as they hadn't really encountered the army at this point?), couldn't the Squad have scouted a bit more before starting to kill people? Maybe sent in some rats or something? This is not a plot-hole or anything, I'm not saying it would have made more sense, only that it's something I might have preferred. Because the knowledge that our protagonists killed a bunch of good people makes it harder for me to care about them.

The funny thing is that they then did make a big deal out of some deaths - or at least tried to. Somehow it actually worked sometimes; specifically with Milton. I liked that he actually stuck with the Squad for a while despite being someone who was just kind of there in the background. He was just a regular guy, not even a soldier really, but he was there breaking into military installations and planting explosives right next to them, just always in the background. And then the film went and actually tried to give his death some weight; while some of the other characters could just shrug and move on, not all of them could. He mattered, at least a little bit. I appreciated that. It almost seemed needed; after all the deaths, the bodies left behind with barely it word, it seemed like we needed to take a moment to stop and say "Look, death is not a trivial thing. Life matters.".


I like Idris Elba, but for some reason I didn't really like him in this movie. It took me a while to come up with a theory as to why, but I think the problem is that he plays Bloodsport as a normal human, whereas practically every other character in the movie is being played as, well, an over-the-top caricature. He's supposed to center the movie, but instead he kind of disappears. And I think that might have affected the whole movie, robbing it of some of it's impact. Or maybe not, I dunno, I'm really just guessing here.

John Cena was a lot of fun, but he also brought a subtle weight to some of his more emotional moments that actually surprised me. When he turns at the end, it feels like a mask he's been wearing to hide from his teammates has cracked and underneath is a real human who feels genuine regret, but is still determined to stick to his principles.

Margot Robbie is still perfect as Harley Quinn. But something felt off with how the character was written this time. She felt different. Part of that can be attributed to character growth; this is her third film after all. But to me it felt more than that. Originally she was eccentric, but intelligent and always aware of what was going on; you could say she was crazy like a fox. This time she was... not quite there? She was very air-headed, you know? Like the bit after she's escaped when she asks if they want her to go back so they could rescue her. She didn't sound sarcastic, she sounded genuine. I'm pretty sure the way she was written in the original movie she would have understood that didn't make any sense, she probably would have made some comment about saving them the trouble instead. Overall she was still entertaining, but in some ways I prefer the first version to this one.

I really liked David Dastmalchian's Polkadot Man. He was quiet, yet very sympathetic. His death was surprisingly bittersweet in that he technically got his wish, though I really feel it deserved to be given more weight; sadly the impact was compromised by the attempt to play it off as a bit of a gag. As I said the movie had a dark sense of humor, and normally that worked, but this is one place where I think it would have been better to play it straight.

Daniela Melchior brought a lot of heart to the Ratcatcher. It's a bit of a shame she didn't really get much time to shine until nearer to the end (she literally slept through half the movie...); perhaps if she'd been more active from the start I would have felt more invested in the whole thing.

Viola Davis was great again. But like some other characters she felt a little different. In the first movie she was cold and ruthless, but not evil: ultimately she was working towards a good cause, at least in part. This time though? She threatened to kill children, and at the end she actively wanted an entire country to be destroyed by an alien creature (one that she should have known would grow stronger if left alone). Seriously: she was going to kill the team to stop them from fighting it. I mean, the chance of them surviving at all was very low, and even if they did she could have killed them later; but she really wanted an entire population of men, women, and children, to be killed by Starro. That's just evil.

I enjoyed Joel Kinnaman's Rick Flag more in this film than in the previous one, though I couldn't really tell you why. I was actually surprised by his death, though to be honest not all that moved by it; he still didn't really have that much personality.

There were a lot of fun cameos, like Taika Waititi; his brief scene was a nice little surprise in which he delivered what I found to be probably the most moving line of the whole film. I feel it's a bit of a shame that some of them didn't get a bit more screen time though. Perhaps the prime example was Michael Rooker; I was enjoying his performance but really thought they could have given him just a little more to do. Sadly the time and nature of his death was a bit of a disappointment; it would have been nice to actually see him in action, at least for a moment or two. They really did Boomerang dirty though; surely as a returning cast member he deserved a little more?


So why is Rick Flag actually here? Previously he was only really part of the Suicide Squad to protect June Moon. But she's not mentioned in this movie at all; whatever happened to her? Why is Flag still on the team now? On the other hand Killer Croc and Kitana are also missing. Croc's role has basically been filled by the CG King Shark, but I wouldn't have minded if Kitana returned with a meatier role this time; I always felt the character had far more potential than we saw in the original film.


Even Starro got a good line at the end. It kind of came out of nowhere a little bit, but I actually thought it was rather moving, and made his death a little bit poignant. It's kind of strange how the climax of the movie was lent so much emotional weight by characters who did so little for most of the runtime.


I find it interesting how this movie seems to closely copy so many of the original's beats. Some bits are so similar that I just don't think it's a coincidence. Was it a game, perhaps a little act of one-upmanship? I don't know, but let's talk about some of them.

Let's start with Bloodsport and his daughter. Bloodsport has so much in common with Will Smith's Deadshot: character archetype, costume aesthetics, position in the team, and his motivation being his relationship with his daughter. The thing is, I found Bloodsport's relationship with his daughter more realistic than Deadshot's. Teenagers are prickly, complicated, and contract killers probably aren't the most well-balanced and loving of parents. That simple sweet doting relationship between the caring father and the innocent little girl didn't feel as honest as the ugly, shouty, antagonistic relationship the self-loathing Bloodsport had with his validation-seeking daughter. It felt less cliched and tied in to a more meaningful character arc.

King Shark was a lot like Killer Croc, only with more humor and, you know, actual dialogue. On the other hand, Killer Croc at least got to justify his presence on the team by being given an underwater job that no-one else could have done. King Shark really... didn't do anything in this movie. I mean, he got a lot of laughs to be sure, but he didn't really contribute to their mission in any meaningful way. He didn't take down any opposition that no-one else could have, he didn't really do anything to Starro, he was just... an extraneous comedic sidekick.

Starro, like Enchantress, was captured by the US government and then went rogue. So once again the Suicide Squad was cleaning up their own mess. Furthermore, Starro had his little star-faced zombies just as Enchantress had her black blob zombies. Now I actually did like Enchantress and thought her betrayal worked very well, but I do feel Starro was a more unique and fun villain, and his death had more weight. And of course his zombies looked much cooler and just worked better on-screen. Plus of course no sky-beam!

Speaking of Starro, Harley Quinn using Javelin's javelin to create a vulnerability allowing Ratchatcher to finish the job was pretty much exactly the same as when she used Kitana's kitana to cut out Enchantress' heart so Deadshot could blow her up. But the Starro thing was a HELL of a lot more stylish! Although both did feel a little contrived, but then her presence on the team has never really made much sense to begin with.

Harley Quinn got separated and had a little romantic fling with one of the bad guys, but then walked away and rejoined the team on her own. Not exactly the same as when Joker came for her in the first one but there's still some parallels there.

Polkadot felt a lot like Diablo did in the first one: a broken man who didn't want any of the bloodshed. And like Diablo he died at the end doing the right thing. But whereas Diablo made the choice to fight, to knowingly sacrifice himself, Polkadot kind of just... went along with the team and did what he was told. And his death felt cheaper and less meaningful as it could have been avoided. On the other hand, Diablo was a non-entity for most of the first movie while Polkadot was more engaging throughout this one, and overall I think was just a more interesting and sympathetic character.


As mentioned the movie had a lot of small details that I appreciated when I thought about them later. For example, the fact that the "computer geeks" actually had some agency in the end; they actually mattered to the plot, not just by doing what they were told, but through their own decisions.

I liked that Bloodspot just turned around on his own to try to do the right thing at the end, without needing someone else to lecture him first. I don't know why movies always feel the need to have another character lecture the protagonist for them to find their concience; having Bloodsport do it on his own volition without anyone staring at him expectantly or shaming him into it was nice.

I loved when Harley Quinn shot Briscoe. I was kind of getting annoyed with the whole "falling in love" sequence; it just wasn't working for me. And then suddenly she shot him. No drawing the moment out, no painful deliberation about what to do: she realised he needed to die and she did it, without hesitation. I honestly feel movies just don't do that enough: have a character just do what we know they need to do, without drawing it out. I also appreciate that she didn't need to be rescued. I'm not saying there would have been anything wrong if she did, it would have just been a bit clichéd.


I was a little surprised that Rick Flag was on the sacrificial team. It's like Waller WANTED him dead? Perhaps she knew he was too straight-laced and was going to be a problem in the future and wanted him out of the way? In the original she kind of used June Moon to control him, with June seemingly not being in the picture anymore and Waller perhaps not needing him now that her program is more established, perhaps she decided it was time to tie up loose ends?


I was kind of happy when I saw that Weasel survived at the end. Not because I liked the character, but because it somehow gave more meaning to Savant's death: at least he managed to save someone before he died. But on the other hand didn't they say that Weasel had killed like twenty-something children? And now this guy is loose on a tiny island nation that's already seen so much death and suffering? I am... concerned.


Bloodsport's armament was weird (and ugly), and massively more technologically advanced than what Peacemaker was running. I'm not familiar with the character in the comics so I dont' know if he has this crazy morphing weapon tech there, but it actually felt a little out of place here. Especially since it doesn't match anything we've seen in the DC movies so far, outside of maybe some alien tech. Plus it didn't really serve a purpose? There wasn't really anything that would have turned out any differently if he had just been armed with slightly more conventional weaponry.


For some reason I thought I saw Pom Klementieff in the bar scene, and kind of thought for a moment she was going to be a character - or at least a cameo. It's probably just because the movie had so many cameos already.


A very long time ago I put together a "wishlist" for a Suicide Squad movie. The original movie did not do too bad a job of living up to that list, but I will say this one arguably does it even better. There are far more deaths, some of them even more surprising. There were betrayals, and they worked pretty well. Yes, they all turned hero at the end, but it was set up much better this time; it was more consistent with what we already knew about the characters, as they had showed themselves to have redeemingly qualities during the rest of the movie. So yeah, I'm pretty happy.

Suicide Squad review

Suicide Squad was not exactly what I had been expecting. The trailers had led me to believe it was something of a dark comedy, but the actual movie was more of a straight-up action flick. Pretty much all of the jokes in the movie are in the trailer, and I actually thought they worked a little better there. I'm not sure why exactly, something about the timing or the tone of the surrounding scenes or something.

What's more, after seeing the bright colours and and characterful costumes in the movie posters, I was a little surprised at how generic most of the film was visually. While there were some moments with visual flair, most of the movie's settings are kind of bland; dark prison cells and dead-standard city architecture (usually at night) - we don't even see any interesting buildings, just typical square skyscrapers. While the "main" villains were pretty cool, the "grunts" that fill most of the action scenes were just boring, and it was usually so dark that they were little more than just moving black blobs. Mild spoiler warning for the rest of the paragraph: the big doomsday device was just a beam of light shooting into the sky, same as we've seen in Avengers and Man of Steel; again, generic at this point.

Having said that, it was a pretty good action movie with pretty entertaining characters who are given enough depth for us to care about (some of) them even though they are "bad guys". While the basic set-up is not complicated, the plot does have a few cool twists; there's enough parties working against each other that I was never quite sure how things were going to turn out.

There's some enjoyable acting here; it was pretty obvious from the trailers that Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn was going to steal the movie (which she did), but I was personally impressed with Viola Davis' turn as Amanda Waller. Cara Delevingne had some stand-out moments as Enchantress; she had some really great body language that made the character feel so alien. Will Smith was fine as Deadshot, but the character - while strong - was a little bland next to the rest of the crew, so his acting was never going to stand out as much as some of the others. Jared Leto's Joker... didn't really work for me. While he definitely pulled off the "crazy", "unpredictable", and "dangerous" aspects that are vital to a good Joker, I never really felt as if he was having fun, which is kind of a big part of the character to me. Jay Hernandez was great as Diablo, I would have liked to see more from him. The rest of the cast did well but didn't really get enough screen time or juicy material for me to be able to say very much more than that.


In the end I'm going to give it a 7/10; it's a good action movie with an engaging plot and entertaining characters.

#####SPOILER WARNING#####

Let's have a quick look at my earlier wishlist for Suicide Squad. I said that I wanted:

1. For characters to betray each other.
This I got. Enchantress turned out to be the main villain, Boomerang goaded Slipknot into making a break for it so that he could test whether the explosives were real, and Harley ditched the team and ran.

2. For important characters to die.
Kind of. Several characters died, but the only one we actually cared about was Diablo, and that was a heroic sacrifice right at the end. They killed Slipknot, but he'd only had about three seconds of screentime until that point, and the only thing we had seen him do was punch a woman for talking, thereby making damn sure we didn't like him and didn't care about his death. Enchantress died, but then she was the villain, that's not the kind of thing I was talking about, and in fact June Moone survived (something that I felt was just too convenient). Overall the effect that I wanted, that is for them to create the feeling that any character could die at any time, even ones that we like, did not happen.

3. For them to remember that these are actually bad guys and not to just have them turn into heroes at the end.
Yeah, they totally went heroic at the end. Stood together as a family and strode forwards into near-certain death and everything, when they could have turned around and walked away. I mean, sure, it's all great cinema and everything, just a little, you know, clichéd. Plus, it creates a situation where you can't really tell the difference between the heroes and the villains in the DC cinematic universe: both kill without remorse and both save the day at the end, just the "villains" have a little more fun doing it (and they don't whine as much).

So overall I felt that they tried to stay true to the source material but ultimately made the concessions that you would expect for a movie aimed at attracting as large an audience as possible. I guess I can't blame them for that. To be honest the only time that I really felt they did something that I would consider "not true to the comics" was when Harley came back after escaping.

That's probably my biggest complaint actually. Why did she come back? If she believed that the Joker was dead, wouldn't she go on a killing spree, murdering everyone she thinks might be even remotely responsible for his death? And why did everyone, both military and criminal, just accept her back with hardly a word despite the fact that she had betrayed them and ran away? This is after her friends opened fire on everyone with heavy weaponry and stole the helicopter that they were going to use to get out of the city by the way.

Although there is one interpretation of the movie where it makes sense. One thing we've been discussing is just how much of the movie was actually just happening in Harley's head. The bit at the end where Joker suddenly just busts in and rescues her? Clearly just a delusional fantasy. But what about the rest? I mean, think about it, what's easier to believe? That the U.S. government would pick a normal human with no military training who's only notable for being an insane and uncontrollable killer (a flashy one at that) to be part of a covert team assembled to fight superhumans, then send her into battle armed only with a baseball bat and an archaic pistol to fight against a pair of resurrected deities building a floating lightning machine that will destroy the world? Or that an insane person is having a weird dream? Plus it explains how no-one objects when she just rejoins the team after betraying them, or how Enchantress is willing to accept her as a servant even though she was a party to killing Enchantress' brother, and how she was personally able to trick the ancient deity with such an obvious ruse to save the day.


I rather wish they hadn't tried to tie this movie to the Justice League stuff they've got going on as the less I'm reminded of the B.S. movie the better, but they did, and so I have to ask: if Enchantress spent three days building this doomsday machine of hers (as is mentioned at one point), then where were all the superheroes that we know exist in this world the whole time? Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash; these are all established superheroes at this point, yet we don't hear a whisper from them. Don't tell me they didn't hear anything about half a city being evacuated while a giant magical storm hovers in clear sight. At the very least Batman should have caught wind of something; he's supposed be to be fairly plugged in, right? Well, it's always possible they'll retro-actively explain it in a future movie: "Huh, looks like something weird happened while I was busy fighting parademons on Apokolips, oh well" or something like that.


As usual I do have a few nit-picks, but I'm not going to bother writing them out as I don't think any of them are important enough to matter really, I'm just going to ask one last question. With the death of Diablo, they don't really have any actual superhumans left on the team other than Killer Crock, who isn't really that big a powerhouse. And the most popular character, Harley, has escaped (maybe). So... what are they going to do for the inevitable sequel? I guess the obvious answer is "introduce a whole lot of new characters". They just have to balance doing that with keeping the old guys relevant I guess.