2016's "Suicide Squad" was a turd, even by the standards of the DC Comics film franchise, which is saying a lot. This is the movie studio that brought us "Aquaman" and the Batman costume with nipples. You could be forgiven for assuming that their second attempt at a Suicide Squad movie would be just as bad. I was pleasantly surprised to find that 2021's “The Suicide Squad” is actually pretty fun.
This film wisely ignores anything that happened in the 2016 film, and it doesn't waste time on lengthy origin stories or tie-ins with other DC characters. It launches right into Agent Waller (Viola Davis) assembling a team of super-miscreants, or maybe I should say “incarcerated persons” who have superpowers. The deal, as she says, “...is the same as always.” Team members get time off their prison sentence if they complete the mission and survive. The mission: destroy a dangerous, giant, alien starfish that has fallen into the hands of an anti-American junta after a military coup in the small nation of Corto Maltese.
Without giving away too much, the team that ultimately does the mission is made up of Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman); a couple of muscular weapons experts called Bloodsport (Idris Elba) and Peacemaker (John Cena); Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), who controls rats; Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), who shoots destructive polka-dots out of his body; King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), literally a walking shark; and, of course, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the psychotic ex-girlfriend of the Joker.
The movie is absolutely ridiculous, but instead of trying to make something serious of itself, “The Suicide Squad” does something that you rarely see in movies from this franchise: It has some fun. The whole movie is like a surrealist fever dream, chock full of violence and humor, as when one character expresses his disbelief at a double-cross, “Blackguard betrayed us!”
It may be something of an accident that “The Suicide Squad” is as good as it is. David Ayer, who directed that crappy 2016 “Suicide Squad,” was set to do a sequel, but he got sidetracked by another project. After going through several candidates, Warner Bros. managed to snag James Gunn from Marvel Studios. Gunn wrote and directed the 2 “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, the second of which is particularly good, and he brings a fresh, devil-may-care aesthetic. (His titling of the film as “THE Suicide Squad” was meant as a joke, but Warner Bros. liked it well enough to keep it.) The cast is excellent, and Margot Robbie has finally gotten the right tone with the Harley Quinn character. Put it all together with a giant starfish rampaging Godzilla-like, and I was able to do something I haven't done at a DC comics movie in quite a while – laugh and have a good time!
3.5 stars out of 5
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment