"THE SUICIDE SQUAD" (2021) Review

 

"THE SUICIDE SQUAD" (2021) Review

No one had felt more surprised than myself when I learned that Warner Brothers had plans for a new movie featuring the D.C. Comics characters - the Suicide Squad. Although a box office hit, the 2016 movie was a critical failure. "SUICIDE SQUAD" is also regarded as one of the worst films of the D.C. Extended Universe (DCEU) franchise.

Yet, Warner Brothers had went ahead with their plans. And the studio hired James Gunn; who had directed 2014's "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY" and its 2017 sequel, "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 2" for Disney Studios/Marvel Films; to write and direct its new film. Both Gunn and Warner Brothers claimed that their new movie, "THE SUICIDE SQUAD", was not a sequel to the 2016 film. Yet, they also claimed that it was also not a reboot. Both claimed that it is a "do-over". Huh. A do-over sounds like a reboot to me.

If "THE SUICIDE SQUAD" was not a sequel, I found it interesting that it had utilized at least four characters from the 2016 film - Harley Quinn, Amanda Waller, Rick Flagg and George Harkness aka Captain Boomerang. It would have featured Floyd Lawton aka Deadshot as well, but Will Smith was unable to do the film. Even David Ayer, the 2016's film's director, had been slated to helm this second film . . . as a sequel. But in the end, Gunn received the assignment. And both the latter and Warner Brothers had decided this new movie would be a reboot. Hmmmm. Okay.

"THE SUICIDE SQUAD" began with Amanda Waller, Director of A.R.G.U.S., assembling members from Task Force X - inmates from the Belle Reve prison - for a new mission. Broken into two teams, "A" and "B", they were sent to the South American island nation of Corto Maltese after its government is overthrown by an anti-American regime, and are tasked with destroying the Nazi-era laboratory Jötunheim which holds a secretive experiment known as "Project Starfish". Waller's immediate subordinate Colonel Rick Flagg led Team A to land on the island and is nearly wiped out from Corto Maltese forces. Apparently, another Suicide Squad member, Richard "Dick" Hertz aka Blackguard, had informed the Corto Maltese of their landing. Only Flagg and Harley Quinn had survived. Team B, lead by sharpshooter/mercenary Robert DuBois aka Bloodsport, managed to land without being detected, due to the Corto Maltese being distracted by Team A's landing. The Corto Maltese managed to capture Harley. Team B searched for Flagg and discovered him taking refuge at a base camp for rebel soldiers lead by one Sol Soria. Flagg and the Team B managed to convince Soria to help them achieve their mission to destroy Project Starfish.

What can I say about "THE SUICIDE SQUAD"? It seemed to possess James Gunn's crazy brand of humor. This was especially apparent in the interactions between Bloodsport and another Team B member, the aggressively patriotic Christopher Smith aka Peacemaker; the deaths of most Team A members on the Colto Maltese beach; Harley's constant failure to recognize one of Soria's rebel soldiers and her final interaction with her captor dictator Silvio Luna. It also featured some interesting action sequences. I especially enjoyed the Suicide Squad's crazy ride through Valle Del Mar's streets, as the Squad and Soria's forces race to save Harley.

The movie definitely benefited from first-rate performances from the cast. "THE SUICIDE SQUAD" featured excellent performances from Idris Elba as Robert DuBois aka Bloodsport, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg, David Dastmalchian as Abner Krill aka Polka-Dot Man, Alice Braga as Sol Soria, Taika Waititi the Ratcatcher, Juan Diego Botto as Silvio Luna, Storm Reid as Bloodsport's daughter Tyla, Joaquín Cosío as Major General Mateo Suárez and Sylvester Stallone's voice performance as Nanaue aka King Shark. However, the movie had its standout performances.

One such performance came from Margot Robbie, who managed to knock it out of the park as Harley Quinn . . . as usual, despite some cringey dialogue. I was also impressed by John Cena's portrayal of the uber-aggressive Peacemaker. In fact, I would go as far to say that his comic timing may have rivalled Robbie's. I was surprised to see Peter Capaldi as the Thinker, let alone in a comic book movie. Yet, he gave a complex performance as Gaius Grieves aka The Thinker, the lead scientist of Project Starfish who finally revealed the truth and the U.S. government's role in it to the Squad. For me, the best performance came from Daniela Melchior, who portrayed Cleo Cazo aka Ratcatcher 2, daughter of the Ratcatcher. Melchior gave a very poignant performance in one scene in which she described her relationship with her father to Bloodsport during the team's respite inside a bar.

Despite its virtues, certain aspects of "THE SUICIDE SQUAD" did not sit well with me. For example . . . the details behind the slaughter of Team A. If Blackguard had not ratted out the mission to the Corto Maltese military, Team A - along with himself - would have never been slaughtered. How did he do it? How did Blackguard managed to make contact and make a deal with the Corto Maltese Armed Forces before leaving the U.S. for the island? While he was a prisoner at a maximum prison like Belle Reve? How did he do it? What makes this so frustrating is that Gunn's screenplay never revealed how Blackguard was able to contact the Corto Maltese in the first place.

And why did Amanda Waller assign Rick Flagg, her trusted second-in-command, to lead Team A? You know, the team that nearly got wiped out by the Corto Maltese troops upon landing? The team that was used as a distraction from Team B's landing. Why did she do this? At first, I thought she had finally regarded Flagg as disposable. And yet, once she had discovered that Flagg had survived Team A's slaughter, she ordered Bloodsport and Team B to rescue him. So, if she wanted Flagg rescued, why in the hell did she assign him to Team A in the first damn place?

If Waller never had any intentions of killing Flagg, why did she bother to recruit Bloodsport to act as Team B's leader? Why did she do that? Why not simply assign Flagg as leader of Team B? In fact, she wanted Bloodsport as leader of Team B so badly that she blackmailed him by threatening to incarcerate his delinquent daughter Tyla at the Belle Reve prison. It seemed bad enough that Waller did not assign Flagg as Team B's leader. But she had to blackmail Bloodsport into assuming the role? Why? If she had wanted Bloodsport on the mission so badly, Waller should have reminded him of the mini bomb planted in his skull. This whole scenario regarding the Corto Maltese landing, Rick Flagg's situation, and the leaderships of both Teams A and B seemed like a vicious circle of contrived writing that produced several plot holes in the end.

I find it amazing that both Gunn and Warner Brothers had insisted that "THE SUICIDE SQUAD" was a "do-over" or reboot of "SUICIDE SQUAD". Not only were four characters from the original film brought back for this movie, Gunn had utilized a good number of characterizations and plot points from the 2016 movie.

For example, Bloodsport nearly came off as a remake of Deadshot. I realize that Gunn had originally intended for Deadshot to be one of the leading characters. But once he was unable to cast Will Smith, he hired Idris Elba to portray Deadshot. Then he changed his mind and decided to have Elba portray another D.C. Comics marksman - Bloodsport. The problem is that aside from some minor differences, Bloodshot reminded me a bit too much of Deadshot. Both were portrayed by actors of African descent. Both are considered among the best marksmen within the D.C. Comics universe. And both characters had complicated relationships with their daughters. When Gunn realized that he was going to have Elba portray Bloodsport, instead of Deadshot, I feel he should have been more original with the former character.

Like "SUICIDE SQUAD", Harley Quinn had a romantic interest in "THE SUICIDE SQUAD". In the 2021 film, she had a romance with Corto Malta's leading dictator Silvio Luna. My problem with this romance is that it had no impact upon the movie's main narrative . . . unlike her relationship with the Joker in "SUICIDE SQUAD". Yes, I found Harley's breakup with the dictator to be one of the film's funniest moments. But I found the entire romance a big waste of time. I wish Gunn had thought of another way to handle Harley's experiences between surviving Team A's slaughter and joining Team B. Gunn had Harley discover Luna's plans to use Project Starfish against other nations. But so what? Even Waller had suspected that might happen. That is why she had sent Task Force X to Corto Malta in the first place. I am sorry, but I found Harley's romance with Luna to be a big waste of time.

Gunn had created his own "bar scene" in "THE SUICIDE SQUAD". Perhaps he had added this sequence to give his protagonists a breather. Or perhaps he wanted to repeat the bar scene from "SUICIDE SQUAD", which is regarded as one of the best aspects of the latter film. How did I feel about it? This sequence featured a great performance from Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2. Yet, it failed to impress me, unlike the 2016 film's bar scene. For me, a woman discussing her loving relationship with her father was not as interesting as a man regretfully confessing to killing his loving wife and kids in a fit of rage. And I still ended with the feeling that Gunn had simply attempted to plagiarize David Ayer's scene.

I also found it interesting that the main villains for both movies were telepathic. And both - the Enchantress and Starro - had been exploited by the U.S. government. However, the Enchantress had been revealed as villainous before being discovered by Dr. June Moone and used by Waller. Starro did not work as a main villain for me. He had simply been an innocent captured and experimented on by the U.S. government. And his experiences had driven him to murderous behavior. Frankly, I feel as if the Thinker would have made a better "Big Bad" than Starro. The latter simply ended up as cartoonish and over-the-top to me. And his death . . . gruesome.

There were other aspects of the movie that bothered me. Whereas Ayer had wasted the Slipknot character in "SUICIDE SQUAD", Gunn managed to waste a slew of characters in this film's first twenty minutes. And one of those characters proved to be Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang. Another wasted character proved to be Michael Rooker's Brian Durlin aka Savant. The movie's opening sequence had spent a good deal of time on Savant's time in prison and preparation for the Corto Malto mission that his fate took me by surprise.

And then there was the matter of the mini bombs planted inside the heads of the Task Force X members. In the film's final sequence, Waller tried to prevent the remaining team members from stopping Starro in his rampage against the Corto Malta inhabitants. Why did she want to prevent the team from saving the Corto Malta citizens in the first place? In the end, her staff knocked her out and prevented her from setting off the bombs inside the remaining squad members' heads. The problem I have with this scenario is the device Waller had planned to use to set off the mini bombs. It resembled a piece of technology straight from the mid-to-late 20th century, instead of the late 2010s or early 2020s. What happened to the smart phones used by Waller and Flagg in the 2016 film? Did Gunn deliberately downplayed the bomb switch technology so that he had an excuse to prevent Waller from carrying out her executions . . . and give Bloodsport enough time to set her up for blackmail, using the Operation Starfish file? And why was Waller’s operations stationed at the Belle Reve Prison, instead of the A.R.G.U.S. headquarters in Washington D.C.? All of this . . . it simply smacked of contrived writing to me.

I also had a problem with King Shark. Earlier, I had pointed out that Sylvester Stallone gave a first-rate voice performance as this character. But I cannot say the same about how Gunn had written King Shark. The latter character struck me as rather infantile and cartoonish. Now I realize that King Shark was originally a human/shark hybrid from Hawaii named Nanaue. But was he portrayed in such a childish manner in "THE SUICIDE SQUAD", to the point I almost found it irritating and offensive. After all, the character had been portrayed with a great deal more intelligence in the comic books, the Harley Quinn animated series and in Arrowverse's "THE FLASH". Why Gunn had decided to portray King Shark as someone with limited intelligence, I do not know.

Over the years, I have noticed that when non-American directors - especially those from Europe - make action films set in the United States, they have a tendency to raise the level of gore and violence that American directors rarely use. I also noticed that Gunn utilized an unusually high level of gore and violence for "THE SUICIDE SQUAD". I found it ironic. Many critics had praised this movie to the skies and rarely anyone complained about the level of violence in this film. Whereas DCEU movies like "BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE" received a great deal of complaints about its violence, "THE SUICIDE SQUAD" did not. Yet, I found the violence in the 2021 film ridiculously excessive. Huh.

Yes, "THE SUICIDE SQUAD" had its virtues. It featured some good action sequences and excellent performances from the cast led by Margot Robbie and Idris Elba. But I believe that thanks to James Gunn's writing, the movie featured an unsatisfying main villain, too many plot holes, too many flaws and unnecessarily excessive violence and gore. By the time the surviving members of the Suicide Squad had its final confrontation with the main villain, I found myself despising this film. Perhaps one day, I will give this movie another chance and learn to appreciate it. Who knows? But right now, I despise and regard it as one of my least favorite comic book movies of all time.