"The Suicide Squad" a blast of weirdo energy, freewheeling characters, and lots of gore

The Suicide Squad (2021)

This is what the DC Comics adaptation should have been the first time. An exhilarating trailer did not quite translate into an exhilarating final cut for 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” thanks to some common studio interference. Five years later, second’s time a charm. Whereas chaos reigned in the editing room for the hot mess that even director David Ayer himself disowned, writer-director James Gunn’s do-over/sort-of sequel “The Suicide Squad” is full of controlled chaos and feels exactly like the movie he wanted to make. It’s all very much Gunn, the offbeat dude who gave us “Slither,” “Super,” and the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies on the Marvel side, and he brings a freewheeling, rambunctious, weirdo energy—and lots and lots of over-the-top gore—that feels just right for this material.

Viola Davis is back to being ruthless and nearly popping a blood vessel while playing government official Amanda Waller. She assembles a team of bad-to-the-bone prisoners for her Task Force X Team; for instance with Savant (Michael Rooker), she promises 10 years off his sentence if he completes the black ops mission. If he or anyone fails to follow her orders, one push of a button will detonate the explosive device implanted in the back of their skulls. They are called “the suicide squad” after all, so things don’t exactly go according to plan once they get to the South American island of Corto Maltese. The team is comprised of world-class marksman Bloodsport (Idris Elba), violent douche-bro Peacemaker (John Cena), rat-controller Cleo Cazo/Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), underestimated Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), and King Shark Nanaue (Sylvester Stallone). Their mission, once they hook up with Colonel Rick Flag (returnee Joel Kinnaman) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), is to infiltrate an experimentation site and destroy the extraterrestrial “Project Starfish.”

Definitively called “The Suicide Squad” for good reason, this is a goddamn blast. Knowing a thing or two about misfit heroes, James Gunn should have always been the first person for the job. Course-correct or not, the film works as a standalone feature, setting an irreverent tone and sticking to it, while making these wisecracking throwaway characters actually worth caring about, including a guy named Milton. With a committed cast not above having fun but still taking these larger-than-life characters with outlandish abilities seriously, Gunn knows exactly how to find little character moments and offhand non-sequiturs (i.e. someone’s question to Amanda Waller about a dust-collecting overhead projector). The mission that this suicide squad must complete has higher stakes, but all one really needs to know is that it amounts to a gooey Troma-like monster on a bigger budget and someone actually gets to say, “We’ve got a frickin’ kaiju up in this shit.” Again, the characters are what matter most here. They are disposable without actually feeling disposable when we want them all to stay alive — or in Bloodsport’s case, make good with his teenage daughter Tyla (well-played by Storm Reid in two scenes). 

Unlike the last version with some of these characters, everyone in the cast gets time to shine. This even includes Amanda Waller’s subordinates and the expendable Team A (Michael Rooker, Pete Davidson, Nathan Fillion, returnee Jai Courtney, and a child-eating weasel, just to name a few). Idris Elba is gruffly funny as the world-weary, rat-phobic Bloodsport who proves to be a leader; John Cena trades smack talk infectiously well with Elba as Peacemaker and proves his musclebound agility (even in his tighty-whities at one point); Daniela Melchior is warm and moving as the eternally tired Ratcatcher 2; David Dastmalchian manages to even bring a certain pathos to his tragic, oddball Polka Dot Man (a running joke involving his Mommy Issues is always hilarious); and Joel Kinnaman has more presence this time than before in reprising Colonel Rick Flag, who’s essentially the straight man surrounded by eccentric anti-heroes. Between "Suicide Squad" and "Birds of Prey," Margot Robbie has complete ownership over Harley Quinn, playing her confidently and unpredictably like the psychotic clown sexpot she is without being overtly sexualized here. Robbie even finds more shades of humanity, particularly in a monologue to a dictator, than she has ever had as Harley. Finally, if Gunn can make you care about a talking twig and raccoon, he sure as hell does it here with a man-eating shark god; Sylvester Stallone deserves nom noms for his voice work making King Shark more of a scene-stealing sweetheart than he should be. 

Rollicking, bonkers, and yet able to locate a beating heart, “The Suicide Squad” is a very R-rated crowd-pleaser. James Gunn’s nutty sensibilities even come through the clever way he uses credits and time cards with blood, sand, and fire. His music choices and where he places them are inspired, like The Jim Carroll Band’s “People Who Died” over the credits and The Pixies’ “Hey” playing over a slo-mo team walk in the rain. Action set-pieces are thrillingly staged, particularly Bloodsport and Peacemaker’s darkly funny one-upmanship in ambushing a guerrilla camp; Harley’s dexterous escape from the Corto Maltese government, guns blazing and animated flowers subbing for blood, all cued to David Lee Roth’s “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody”; a fight that gets reflected in Peacemaker’s silver helmet; and the climax, where our heroes outrun the collapsing floor of a building. Never once feeling safe or watered-down, "The Suicide Squad" is wild and delightfully unhinged, like its characters in cinematic form. 

Grade: B +

Warner Bros. is releasing “The Suicide Squad” (132 min.) in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6, 2021.