Suicide Squad is the latest DC film to drop to the big screen and serves as a delicious piece of popcorn munching madness to watch for superhero movie enthusiasts.
James Gunn’s vision for the team of criminal misfit’s brings together King Shark, Harley Quinn, Bloodsport and others to take down a giant intergalactic starfish in a banana republic island nation.
Sound crazy? Well get ready for some extreme violence, gallows humour and great action as they fight, claw, and eat their way to their goal. This version of the iconic team does a much better job than its 2016 predecessor at understanding and delivering the sort of wild, brazen action that comic book fans were so eager to see on the big screen. The biggest weakness that strikes the new Suicide Squad is when it strays from the mindless fun and takes itself too seriously, a turn that noticeably happens in the third act of the film.
The film starts off with a very streamlined explanation of how the Squad functions. A special black ops unit, prisoners are given the chance to take years off their sentence by performing incredibly dangerous missions. An explosive chip in their necks guarantees that they obey all orders and follow through, abandon the mission and the chip blows their heads off. Were quickly introduced to about a dozen interesting characters, from Javelin Man to Rick Flagg who leads them and Amanda Waller who supervises the whole operation. With her tough attitude, she represents the harsh, unforgiving steps the US government has taken to deal with superhero level threats. Why get a psychotic woman who fights with a baseball bat to deal with armed militias? Don’t question it.
Idris Elba serves as our protagonist and as Bloodsport, an eerily similar but copyright free alternative to Will Smith’s Deadshot from 2016. He’s also joined by Polkadot man and Ratcatcher 2, some of the more uninteresting characters in the whole film. Their powers are self-explanatory with their names. John Cena also stars as Peacemaker, Bloodsport’s counterpart and rival on the team.
The team formed, they storm Corto Maltese (the small island nation) by night and make their way to the country’s capital to obliterate whatever is held in its highly secret science laboratory. Shocking revelations cause the team to splinter near the end and moral judgements are made by all members as to whether or not they should carry out their mission. Without going into details, this is the most boring aspect to the film. It is unfortunate that James Gunn (or maybe Warner Bros?) thought it necessary to inject hard sentimentality into a film where a talking shark played by Sylvester Stallone eats people.
However, apart from a few scenes, James’s Gunn’s Suicide Squad is an entertaining superhero flick that will be enough to make up for the lack of big movies at the cinemas this summer and will keep you and your friends entertained.
Anton Rivas Pertile – Film & TV Writer
