MOVIE REVIEW: The Suicide Squad (2021)

Marvel Studios would never, ever let James Gunn do half of what he just did in The Suicide Squad.

That might seem like shots fired, but you got to remember that I’m the guy that’s been looking forward to seeing what Gunn would do outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe assembly line sandbox, and based on his other work that I’ve seen, and his noted attention to detail for source material, this movie had the potential to be his magnum opus.

Having only watched three of his directed films now, I’ll go ahead and say that it is. Seriously. The Suicide Squad is the best movie James Gunn has made to date.

Let’s take it a step further: The Suicide Squad is a top tier DCEU AND DC film.

That means it’s not only one of the best in this current shared universe, it’s one of the better ones in the pantheon of DC Comics adaptations, and at the end of the day it comes down to one simple rule that WB needs to follow for the rest of its existence:

Trust your creatives. Period. That is all.

There’s a definitely a bittersweet component to this movie, because the freedom that James Gunn was clearly and very obviously given for this R-rated 2 hour and 12 minute adrenaline adventure, is the polar opposite of what happened to his predecessor David Ayer in 2016 with the first Suicide Squad adaptation. Many of us are still waiting for the Ayer Cut of that film to be released so that we can fully enjoy the original vision as intended, just as we did earlier this year with Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

For now though, we can say that David Ayer sacrificed so that James Gunn could roam free, and both of them know that’s the case as much as we do, but I’ll fully admit I wasn’t even ready for some of the things Gunn does in this film. For starters, the visuals are outstanding, and I don’t just mean the set pieces, VFX and action, I’m also talking about the camera work and some of the storytelling devices that Gunn uses during the narrative. It’s inventive and clever at times, and at one point you just have to give him a round of applause for giving us an action sequence framed in the reflection of a helmet for nearly a full minute, in addition to the other visual spectacles we see in the movie.

On top of that, The Suicide Squad plays with your head in terms of time. At least twice in the movie, your brain goes “wait a minute, why did that happen?” You then spend some time wondering if that’s going to be an issue going forward in the movie because something happened that wasn’t entirely explained. It’s at that point that Gunn goes, “roll the tape back a bit, we need to tell you why what you just saw happened before we go any further.”

The first time it happened, I was in awe because I wasn’t expecting it. The second time it happened, I was relieved because we really did need to know what the hell had just happened in a particular scene. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. If you haven’t yet, you can’t miss it. It’s something else.

The movie more than earns its R rating in several classes, not just language. In many ways, this movie answers the question of what if Quentin Tarantino directed a comic book movie, because this is his level of blood and gore in a super-powered world with a heightened suspension of disbelief as we’ve come to expect from comic book movies. Somehow, it manages to be brutal and disgusting at times, but never gratuitous. The violence and gore that we are seeing conveys a point about what is happening and who is involved in it, in several cases throughout the movie, and let’s be clear, this is a REAL movie.

What I mean by that, is that this comic book movie, for all the action, humor and craziness, has actual stakes, character development and a pretty cohesive plot. All you need to know going in is that Task Force X is being sent to Corto Maltese to deal with Project Starfish, whom we already know is Starro. That pretty much plays out A to B over the film.

What fills that plotline out very well though is again, an ACTUAL STORY involving our main characters, the collateral damage of the supporting humans involved with them, and a surprising amount of development for damn near everyone on screen. Honestly, one of the first things to suffer in such a huge ensemble film is somebody gets massively left out in terms of screen time, but I’m struggling to figure out who it was that got the short end of the stick here, because everyone I actually cared about on screen was pretty fleshed out.

Building on that, let’s get to the cast. We already know about our four returnees from the 2016 studio film in Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flagg, Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller, Jai Courteney’s Captain Boomerang, and of course Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, in what is now her THIRD live action appearance as the character.

Let’s also make this clear as well: What her character does, says and indicates, takes both Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey(And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn) fully into account. This is not a Harley that just busted out of Belle Reve with The Joker, it’s the one that blew up Ace Chemicals and waged war against Black Mask and Victor Zsasz over a mob diamond, whether she directly says it or not. Just putting that out there for the connection hounds, as I’ve said before that these actors, whether they are given continuity orders are not, are still going to build upon their characters in a linear sense, and Robbie ABSOLUTELY does that in this film. She IS Harley Quinn, and now after three movies, she KNOWS she’s Harley Quinn. Veteran performance.

I worried that Davis wouldn’t have much to do as “The Wall,” but I was happily mistaken. She’s arguably scarier in this film than she is in the 2016 film for more than a few reasons. Perfect casting for that role, once again.

But what about the newcomers? Well, Idris Elba as Bloodsport is what you expect from Idris Elba: Brilliance. The man has the dramatic chops, the intimidating range and the ability to pull off situational humor and chemistry. More on that in a bit for the whole movie.

What about John Cena’s Peacemaker? Well, you’re supposed to hate him and think that he’s rather naive and basic for what he’s involved in, which is the whole point, so he plays that well. Between this and F9, which I saw last month, the guy has got some acting chops. I certainly wouldn’t call him wooden or stiff as a mistake in this film, but again, you’re supposed to hate him and think him naive.

Daniela Melchior’s Ratcatcher 2 is THE heart of the movie, without question. David Dastmalchian’s Polka-Dot Man helps her out, but she carries the emotionally grounded weight for this film with her presence and her backstory, which was way more emotional than I thought it would be. Same goes for Dastmalchian at times, who is such a veteran of the comic book adaptation genre himself now. First as Thomas Schiff, one of the Joker’s flunkies in The Dark Knight, then as Kurt in two Ant-Man movies for Marvel, Dwight Pollard in a pair of appearances in Gotham, another pair of episodes of The Flash as Abra Kadabra, and now this, and he’ll likely be in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, you would think. Guy just loves superhero stuff, clearly.

Without going too much deeper into characters as to risk spoilers, I’ll just add that I really dug Peter Capaldi’s Thinker and Sylvester Stallone’s King Shark. Wasn’t sure how either one of those were going to play out in this ensemble, but I really liked them both overall.

Now, about that humor. What have I said about DC movies many times? They don’t do one-liners and quips, they do situational humor that is more organic, and subjectively speaking that’s always funnier, at least to me.

It’s the same thing in The Suicide Squad, seriously. I’m sure plenty of people will disagree with me on that and will keep their bias for Gunn being a Marvel director in full force when judging the jokes, but just because this movie has more humor in it doesn’t make it the same as the forced one-liners we see all over the MCU’s timeline. The jokes we saw in that red band trailer hit differently in the full context of the movie, which is what I was hoping for, and why I was unwilling to pass judgment on them until seeing it. This isn’t Guardians of the Galaxy made for DC at all, it’s humor that fits into what DCEU movies have done for the past five years, at least to me. It was hilarious, I cracked up multiple times, and it just felt better overall.

Bottom line? I’m watching this movie again as soon as I can and hopefully I can see it in IMAX. My first viewing had to be at home on HBO Max, but since my Apple TV is 4K and has Dolby Vision available, it was still gorgeous to watch, and didn’t have to worry about waking my neighbors at 3am thanks to my Airpods. That concludes the Apple commercial portion of this review.

The Suicide Squad is VERY GOOD, and if it ends up being in the middle of my new DCEU rankings list, it’s not because it’s lesser at all. It’s because the films ahead of it are that much ahead, in my opinion. Still, James Gunn delivered, and it looks like WB is solid on him sticking in the DCEU, and his interviews sound like someone that wants to run right back to them after Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 is over.

I say, welcome James. You’ve now shown me what you can do outside of Marvel’s rules, and I’ll gladly take more of it, so long as WB continues to stay out of your way.