THE SUICIDE SQUAD is a bloody and hilarious good time – Fantasia 2021 review

The Suicide Squad is dead. Long live The Suicide Squad.

While David Ayer’s Suicide Squad film was roundly savaged when it was unleashed five years ago, the group of unstable super-powered mercenaries has been given another shot with writer-director James Gunn’s wildly bloody and irreverent re-do.

The Suicide Squad is shot-full of Gunn’s raw energy and unabashed love of genre filmmaking. The film takes elements of Gunn’s prior work on films like Guardians of the Galaxy (a large comic-based group dynamic) and mixes in elements of gore (Slither), and full-on absurdity (Tromeo and Juliet) for a film unlike anything else we’ve seen from the D.C. Comics cinematic universe so far.

While technically set within the same world as iconic characters like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad is its own beast. The film follows a group of convicts with special powers who are enlisted/coerced into a dangerous mission by a secretive government agency known as A.R.G.U.S. Run with an iron fist by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the members of Task Force X are offered a chance at parole if they can complete a mission so dangerous it’s considered a suicide run (Waller’s underlings even place bets on which members will die).

The Suicide Squad opens with a great fakeout. We first meet a rogues’ gallery of convicts with superpowers heading out on a mission to the South American island nation of Corto Maltese. The group is there to destroy Jötunheim, a secret WW-II-era installation that has been conducting human experiments as part of a mysterious program known as “Project Starfish.” Led by Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), the inept team is summarily killed off within moments in a blood-soaked explosion of violence that nods to the hilarious X-Force kill-off in Deadpool 2.

Meanwhile, the real team is approaching the island undisturbed from the other side, with the first Suicide Squad truly living up to their unfortunate nickname. Not that the primary team is any more stable. The group is made up of a hodgepodge of prickly and out-there anti-heroes including Bloodsport (Idris Alba), the ironically dubbed Peacemaker (John Cena), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), The Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), and King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone).

Even for a comic book movie, it’s a pretty wacky collection of characters. Peacemaker is an ultra-violent maniac who believes in securing peace through mass murder, The Polka-Dot Man develops colorful facial blisters that he tears off and throws at enemies (while working through crippling mother issues), and King Shark is a walking, semi-verbal … shark, with a newfound appetite for human fletch. The Justice League, this isn’t.

Gunn masterfully weaves the interplay and banter between this disparate group of maniacs and creates an often hilarious and even touching look at these characters. (Yes, even the Ratcatcher 2 back-story will choke you up). Margot Robbie reprises the deranged madness of Joker-ex Harley Quinn for the third time here, and it’s another delightful portrayal of a character that shouldn’t work on the big screen, but absolutely does thanks to Robbie’s upbeat and unhinged performance.

Alongside the great interplay between the characters, The Suicide Squad is also a visual feast. From the constant strawberry jam-like explosions of flesh to the towering arrival of the kaiju-like Starro (an extraterrestrial starfish, natch), there’s a constant bombardment of unusual action set pieces throughout the film to keep things flying along. The most striking of the batch is a solo Harley Quinn murder spree sequence that takes us inside Quinn’s mind during the action, with the screen lighting up with flowers and animated birds at her side like an R-rated Disney animated musical.

In spite of the over-the-top nature of the material, Gunn still manages to get in some digs at the insidious nature of American interventionism and the dangers of a fascistic force looking to secure “peace” at any cost. We’ve seen this tackled recently in The Boys as well, and even in Zack Snyder’s D.C. films, though those seem to fall on the other side of the interventionist argument (Snyder is also an executive producer for The Suicide Squad). It’s a nice subversive touch in a blockbuster comics movie and leaves audiences with something to chew on alongside the dick jokes and bloody headshots.

James Gunn is clearly having a blast here, and that enthusiasm and child-like fun permeates every frame of this bonkers movie. It’s incredible that someone who started in the ultra-low-budget world of Troma films (did we spot a Lloyd Kaufman cameo?) has been given the keys to work in both the Marvel and D.C. sandboxes. As enjoyable as the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies are, The Suicide Squad truly feels like Gunn’s id unleashed.

The film looks like a (very adult) comic book come to life, and the odd-couple dynamics between the team should make this a fun rewatch for years to come. Like most comic adaptations, there’s a bit too much going on plot-wise (the middle half of the film sags under the weight of too many strands), but when Gunn truly gets cooking, this is one of the most entertaining blockbusters in years.

The Suicide Squad is in theatres and on HBO Max now.