Geeks logo

Movie Review: 'The Suicide Squad'

It's better than the awful 2016 version but even James Gunn can't rescue The Suicide Squad.

By Sean PatrickPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
Like

The Suicide Squad is a yawning chasm where fun should be. This R-rated action-comedy from the often very funny James Gunn is sadly a loud, obnoxious and unconvincing superhero movie. The Suicide Squad is an attempt by Warner Media to make up for the historic failure that was the 2016 disaster, Suicide Squad, minus the ‘The.’ The Suicide Squad is certainly an improvement over the edited in a blender and assembled by blind monkey’s 2016 abomination but that was an incredibly low bar to step over.

The Suicide Squad brings back some of the same characters as the first Suicide Squad, specifically Margot Robbe’s wonderfully anarchic Harley Quinn, Jai Courtney’s utterly forgettable Captain Boomerang, and Joel Kinnamon’s milquetoast Colonel Flagg. Joining them are a myriad of fellow celebrities and friends of director James Gunn in cameos as the newest members of The Suicide Squad.

Also returning is Oscar Winner Viola Davis in the role of the remarkably incompetent and supremely arrogant Amanda Waller. Waller is once again heading up the mission of assembling a suicide squad from amongst a bizarre rogues gallery of lesser known D.C villains. As with last time, her attempt at getting villains to do her dirty work fails almost immediately before failing in a completely different way in the end. In this incarnation the leader will be Bloodsport (Idris Elba), a weapons expert who is currently in prison for nearly killing Superman with a kryptonite bullet. He’s not to be confused with Deadshot, a weapons expert who once nearly killed Batman and was played by Will Smith in the really bad Suicide Squad movie.

Bloodsport’s new team includes Peacemaker (John Cena), a super-patriot with a hair trigger, Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), she controls rats, Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), a freak who can melt people with polka dots, no really, and finally King Shark (voice of Sylvester Stallone), an unkillable walking shark with a very tiny brain. Together they will infiltrate a non-specifically South American adjacent island that harbors a dark and secret government experiment overseen by Thinker (Peter Capaldi).

If you’re wondering where Harley Quinn, Boomerang and Colonel Flagg fit into all this, I will leave you to discover that by watching The Suicide Squad for yourself. I am not going to recommend the movie as I didn’t enjoy it myself, but I see no reason to ruin it for those who might be more inclined to enjoy this kind of R-rated, low-watt comedic action. The movie has an ambitious idea at its core but seems to settle for being mostly competent.

So, what’s wrong with The Suicide Squad? Not all that much except the overall premise and the witless characters. James Gunn is a good director but his attempts at gags come off as desperate and flailing especially early on when he seems to want to subject us to a parody of The Suicide Squad rather than the actual suicide squad. Here, characters played by Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion, Flula Borg and Pete Davidson are used more as props than as the kind of talented comedic performers that we know them to be.

I get what James Gunn was going for with these characters but it simply did nothing for me. The demise of these characters isn’t particularly interesting or funny. Instead, it’s rather gory, OTT, and fails to establish anything other than a level of bloody violence that comes far too early on and leaves nowhere else for the movie to go when it should be building to something even more shocking or at least surprising.

The nicest thing I can say about The Suicide Squad is that it doesn’t ruin Margot Robbe’s terrific run of performances as Harley Quinn. Robbe is such a pro that she steals the movie effortlessly. She has a sequence in which she plays out a complete love story in about 5 minutes and it’s the only time in the movie where the potential of James Gunn and The Suicide Squad is met. The sequence is an all to brief moment of fun and excitement amid a lot of derivative gore and strained humor.

The Suicide Squad is in theaters nationwide and streaming on HBO Max as of August 7th, 2021.

movie
Like

About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.