If you’re not ready for spoilers then you might want to stop reading, but if you’ve seen The Suicide Squad already then read on and see if you agree with our assessment. To start with, it wasn’t too bad really, but it was one giant fakeout to be honest since casting so many well-known stars to the roster wasn’t exactly a masterful stroke by James Gunn, but was definitely a strange and kind of amusing one since it put a new spin on this idea that the first movie can’t really match. I won’t even say ‘no offense’ since within the first twenty minutes of this movie things hit such a crazy pace that one might have thought they’d come in at the very last part of it only to realize that this was the beginning and things were only bound to get even more nuts. First off, the selection of the squad was downright crazy since the initial group that went charging in makes it clear that Amanda Waller and her crew are slipping when it comes to who they choose for a mission and why.
The word that there would be a lot of deaths wasn’t an exaggeration, since out of the first squad that was seen on the beach in the trailers, only two appeared to get away, not without harm, but alive at least. It was kind of fun to hear Captain Boomerang allude to the David Ayer movie by showing his familiarity with Harley Quinn, who was thankfully Joker-free this time around. But the death scenes, huh boy, this one went bloody and it actually played out better for it since the death scenes were a lot more convincing even if they’re bound to make a lot of people say ‘DAMN’, with some feeling behind it. James Gunn knows how to put on a show, and to be fair, most of those that died in the first thirty minutes, yes really, are characters that a lot of people probably don’t know that well, and those that survived past the beach are those that are being pushed in a much bigger way.
For some reason, John Cena is way too good at playing a jerk, Idris Elba is definitely great as a super-aggressive tough guy, and Joel Kinnaman is, well, he’s still the good soldier, but this time around he was a little more believable in his role, which was nice. As an assassin though, Deadshot is nearly comical when he displays his fear of rats, while King Shark is kind of the goofy, but deadly, individual that isn’t shy about grabbing a snack when he’s hungry, even if it happened to almost be Ratcatcher 2, who sleeps like the dead, ironically speaking. The one-upmanship between Deadshot and Peacemaker was kind of amusing, especially since Peacemaker’s weaponry was way more powerful than it should have been. Seriously, when was the last time anyone saw a blowgun that could remain accurate past sixty feet? This is when the comic book effect comes in to showcase how awesome these characters are since Peacemaker must have amazing lung power to get that dart to fly that far, and a serious grasp of how to aim for accuracy at such a distance.
But getting past that, Harley Quinn was in fine form once again, and wielding a golden javelin no less as she turned on the crazy and the serious feats of strength as she managed to shine once again amidst a group of popular stars that had a much better chance of overshadowing her, but didn’t. Harley has become such an iconic character that her part made the movie in a big way. Without having to be PC or PG-13 though this movie was a huge improvement. And yes, I’ll go ahead and say it, without Jared Leto’s gang-star Joker tooling around doing little to nothing useful, it was definitely a lot better since it focused entirely on the mission and didn’t really screw around. We did get a brief backstory from Ratcatcher 2, and a confrontation between Deadshot and his daughter, and even a very strange fixation on Polka Dot Man’s mother, but it all played out just fine for the sake of the movie, no matter how odd the last one was. Polka Dot Man, for being such a joke in the comics, actually had a moment to shine in the movie.
Another great moment was seeing Amanda Waller getting smacked with a golf club, and no, not to promote violence against women, but because her character is every bit as horrible here as it was in the Ayer movie. It’s easy to give props to Viola Davis since she’s a great actress, but it’s SO easy to hate Waller that one might actually find themselves hoping for her death at one point.
James Gunn
Follow Us
