*Warning: This piece contains spoilers for The Suicide Squad*
A clear change of pace and tone is established within mere minutes of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, compared to the gloomy 2016 original directed by David Ayer. The first installment had a plethora of structural issues, spending about thirty minutes of a two-hour film flipping a portfolio to introduce its main protagonists, not to mention a Spotify playlist of forced needle-drops. None of the film’s stylistic choices and exposition had any emotional weight, which made the film a rather frustrating watch, especially after an incredible marketing campaign with the single greatest trailer I’ve ever seen. No kidding: when that second trailer premiered, to the sounds of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, I had never been more excited for any movie… ever. Ultimately, the result was disappointing (and I don’t see how a rumored “Ayer Cut” could ever improve it), but the potential for a better film was there. The characters were interesting enough to warrant a sequel. Warner Bros. just needed a better writer/director to flesh them out.
Enter James Gunn, who seemed to be the perfect writer/filmmaker to bring The Suicide Squad to life — after all, the first film felt like DC’s answer to Guardians of the Galaxy. And Gunn doesn’t hide the fact that this is an R-rated Guardians flick by blending visceral action, comedy and 70-80s needle-drops (while bringing Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion, Sean Gunn and Sylvester Stallone to the mix, who all starred in one or two Guardians films). As the film’s opening credits sequence blare out The Jim Carroll Band’s People Who Died (which feels like an Awesome Mix song that didn’t make the cut), you can’t help but shake the feeling that Gunn won’t veer off too far from his work at Marvel Studios.
That feeling quickly dissipates, as the film opens with a literal bang, with Gunn killing off most of its main characters in an action sequence so wild you won’t be able to catch your breath. That team, composed of Savant (Rooker), T.D.K. (Fillion), Blackguard (Pete Davidson), Weasel (Sean Gunn), Javelin (Flula Borg), Mongal (Mayling Ng) and Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) was sent by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to distract the soldiers of the island of Corto Maltese, while Team 2 has a real objective. The entirety of team 1 dies, with the exception of Quinn and Flag who get abducted by soldiers. Team 2 on the other hand, comprised of Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Nanaue/King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), Ratcatcher-2 (Daniela Melchoir) and the Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), are tasked by Waller to destroy Corto Maltese’s laboratory of Jotunheim, which holds a secret experiment known as “Project Starfish,” supervised by Dr. Gaius Grieves (Peter Capaldi). Little do they know that Project Starfish is actually Starro the Conqueror, a giant starfish able to control the entire population through smaller versions of itself. It’s now up to the new Suicide Squad to not only destroy the lab, but save the world, even if it means defying Waller’s orders and dying in the process.
Unlike Ayer, James Gunn is unafraid at killing his characters even if it might piss off audiences in the process. When Slipknot (Adam Beach) got killed in Suicide Squad, it didn’t feel remotely earned and only demonstrated that Waller wasn’t screwing around on the explosive chip in the base of their skull. Slipknot, “the man who can climb anything” dies after climbing his first wall. In The Suicide Squad, it becomes extremely clear that no promises are made that any of the characters will survive Corto Maltese. After my favorite character in the 2016 film, Captain Boomerang, bites the dust during the first 10 minutes in extremely gory fashion, you know that Gunn isn’t screwing around and can kill off any character he wants without warning. By viewing the trailer multiple times, you may predict which character dies, but you won’t know how they get killed until you see it. The Suicide Squad not only embraces its well-earned title but gives fans the R-Rated ultraviolet extravaganza they likely wanted with the PG-13 rated first installment.
Every action scene is a thrill to watch, as they’re both amazingly violent and vividly shot. Cinematographer Henry Braham utilizes an extremely nimble camera (an IMAX-certified RED Monstro to be exact) to create quick and dynamic movement, which allows for highly effective and cathartic action sequences. The opening scene cranks up the carnage to 11, up until its hour-long climax, which throws everything at the screen in the hopes that the audience’s eyes melt off seeing a group of anti-heroes battle a larger-than-life creature-like Starro. The camera is always in movement, but Gunn always focuses on the characters during large bouts of action, instead of concentrating on the big CGI rubbles. One action scene, which pits Bloodsport and Peacemaker in the Island, as they compete against who can pull off the most over-the-top kill, always brings the camera back to two characters, and puts the henchmen in the background. Our eyes are focused on Elba and Cena’s techniques instead of the kills per se (even though one, in particular, is highly memorable).
Both Idris Elba and John Cena are excellent and have great fun in the film, but the best character out of The Suicide Squad’s A-list cast is David Dastmalchian’s Polka Dot Man. As useless and ridiculous as his superpower is, Gunn and Braham are able to make him the coolest and funniest character in the entire roster. Without going into specifics, the one running gag Abner Krill has that makes him such an effective killer had me howling in the cinema. Only James Gunn could ever come up with something so ridiculous and yet humanize it to the point where it becomes part of Krill’s personality. This has always been Gunn’s strong suit: humanizing characters through light-hearted moments of humor. Even if some of the film’s jokes don’t always land, Gunn makes sure everyone has their time to shine and that the audience becomes fully invested in each and every character. While many of them die during the opening scene, you still feel attached to them as if you knew them already, even though the audience only spent time with them through one helicopter conversation. That’s how great of a screenwriter Gunn is: he can make us care about anyone through minimal lines of dialogue that showcases the characters’ traits instead of needlessly explaining it through exposition, as Ayer did.
Still, that doesn’t mean the movie is devoid of any flaws. While Cleo Cazo/Ratcatcher-2 is another great character, boosted by a wonderful performance by Daniela Melchoir, the film could’ve deepened her relationship with her father (Taika Waititi) instead of staying in surface-level flashbacks that didn’t really do anything to her character. If you’d remove both flashback sequences from the film, you wouldn’t lose anything on the main story, nor on its characters. That’s how unimportant they feel, with Gunn also wasting Taika Waititi’s talents in a minor role, where more developed flashbacks would have benefited from seeing a more dramatic side from a usually comedic actor. The film is also a tad too long, which is a major problem in and of itself in superhero cinema. There’s no reason for its climax to be almost an hour-long, adding one layer of the plot after another in a way where it becomes easily convoluted. While it’s great to see Peter Capaldi in a role that feels specifically tailor-made for him, it becomes very hard to discern the endgame of Task Force X, as it’s revealed that Waller (predictably) has her agenda and hid specific details to the larger team. When it’s divulged that Peacemaker was sent by Waller to kill anyone who knows about America’s involvement with Starro and cover up any potential leaks, I became more disconnected with the plot, as it kept adding new threads to follow, with Gunn never really connecting with them. This results in a rather discombobulated climax in an otherwise hugely entertaining battle between The Suicide Squad and Starro.
When it bathes in total ridiculousness and over-the-top violence, The Suicide Squad excels at delivering a highly dynamic time at the movies. Its drastic change in tone from the first film allows for a more freeing exploration of John Ostrander’s comic run instead of trying to be dark and brooding all the time. This not only benefits the characters, who are much more fleshed out as in the first film, but the overall audience engagement in the film. If you deliver a satisfying summer popcorn blockbuster at a time where people need pure escapism to distract them from virtually everything that’s going on in the world, audiences will eat it up. I certainly did and am very much looking forward to seeing more of Gunn’s take on the characters in Peacemaker next January (what a joke).
