Entertainment Earth

The Suicide Squad Review

Here’s my The Suicide Squad review which is directed by James Gunn and stars Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, David Dastmalchian, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis and more!

The suicide squad

James Gunn was the perfect for this film. He knew where to insert good bits like good songs and humor and then juxtaposing it with all sorts of violence and gore. He proves once again tha

It’s also a good anti-hero movie with a lot of great set pieces and good visual effects.

As a comic book fan it captures the heart of the source material where we have this bunch of bad guys working to get years off of their prison sentence to work for Amanda Waller. The team is also composed of misguided or good guys who are borderline villains with how they do things and how see the world.

The casting was amazing here and we continue to see that Margot Robbie is just perfect for the role of Harley Quinn. The same goes for Idris Elba and John Cena playing Bloodsport and Peacemaker respectively.

Three interesting characters that also made up Suicide Squad are Ratcatcher 2, Polka Dot Man and King Shark who is referred here as Nanaue. Like what many had said when they shared their thoughts on the movie, Ratcatcher 2 was the heart and the soul of the movie.

polka dot man the suicide squad

King Shark on the other hand was the innocence for the film. Only if innocence sounded like Sylvester Stallone and looked like a humanoid Great White Shark with a taste for human flesh. I liked how Gunn wrote this particular character, seeming not to care about what really happens and can’t be bothered to see the politics and sensitivity of the issues surrounding his mission. His arc really ended in the jungle with his little conversation with Ratcatcher 2.

Backstory building is done differently here in The Suicide Squad as opposed to the last outing. The first movie did all this crazy montages for the characters to show viewers the powers and skills but in this one, Gunn has you sitting down and listening. And he brings all this backstory banter in different places for the main characters like Polka Dot Man who bares bits of him in the middle of a hike in the jungle.

Much props too for Harley Quinn’s growth here. She can now spot red flags after her relationship with “Mistah J” which kind of also gets sorted out in Birds of Prey already. But she and the writer/director can’t help but do a bit of monologuing in the film which gives us more insights on what she is now and how she sees things.

That’s not the only thing great about this outing for Ms Quinn as she’s also been given a juicy action set piece that really bursts with color and violence. I liked that whole solo-ing in her prison breakout in Birds of Prey but her action scene in The Suicide Squad takes it two notches up.

And there’s a lot of feet sequence here for Robbie that would make Quentin Tarantino giddy like a school boy.

Idris Elba’s Bloodsport here would have benefitted from a flashback much like how they did things with Will Smith’s Deadshot. It could have been more intimidating for audience to see him really put “Superman in an ICU with a Kryptonite Bullet”. But alas, either DC and Warner wasn’t willing to go down that path or its still an availability issue for Henry Cavill.

Really dug the character growth for Bloodsport and it was well paced. And then we also get that segment with Ratcatcher 2 and Bloodsport bonding which was cathartic for both characters; Cleo misses her dad while Robert kind of loves his daughter and sees his daughter in his young teammate.

There’s also that nice one-upmanship they had with John Cena’s Peacemaker. And like the classic Chekov’s Gun trope, we did see something they referred to earlier in the movie.

Great stuff handling John Cena too with him initially being another guy with an identical MO in the team and then becoming something entirely else at the end of the movie. Although his isn’t lazy writing, as they already keep saying that he’s willing to do anything and everything to achieve peace. And even if he has to eat a beachful of “dicks” then he’ll do it.

What you may love or hate about The Suicide Squad is its continuing trend of killing off people you think would have plot armor. Sure there’s still plot armor here but who you think would survive kind of not happens and you’re left to wish them luck. There’s even foreshadowing here for one of the characters in the bar. It’s sad but that really is the case from the books.

Is it really the year of the animal characters for both Marvel and DC? Loki had generated a ton of positive buzz with Alligator Loki and now WB and DC has their own thing with Sebastian the Rat. I have to say thought they are both adoring and Im happy they survived.

Another jarring difference with David Ayer’s Suicide Squad and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is the choice of music. You don’t see it much but Gunn is an expert when it comes to integratin music to the movies he makes. Just look at Slither, just look at Guardians of the Galaxy volume 1 and especially Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2. And here it helps set the mood and the tone.

One crazy aspect of The Suicide Squad that I also wanted to touch on is their brilliant use of the background scene to become sort of these thought bubbles or captions from the comics. Whether its telling us that they will be doing Operation Jotunheim or that there’s another scene that happened 8 minutes ago, they all look nice. I sincerely hope that DC does this moving forward with their films and let Marvel have their boring big texts.

starro the conqueror vs the suicide squad

It could also be something lifted out of the comics i.e. its like chapter titles. Wouldn’t be surprised if this would also be actual chapter titles for the Blu-Ray release.

Deaths

And like the comic version of the Squad, nobody is safe and we see that within the first 30 minutes of the film. Gunn definitely made sure that dead means dead. He’s even good with killing returning characters.

 

The Suicide Squad Review – Verdict

10/10

Loved this movie. It’s definitely a big return to good form for DC Comics and Warner Bros. James Gunn definitely continues to showcase how good he is with ensemble casts playing non-popular characters just like he did with GoTG. The humor is good without being too forced, the action sequences are also AMAZING and the story is faithful to the source material, which is the comic book.

Follow me on Twitter at @thefanboyseo for more geek news and updates!

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *