The Suicide Squad (2021)

The Suicide Squad (2021)

 

5/10

Starring

Margot Robbie

Idris Elba

John Cena

Joel Kinnaman

Sylvester Stallone

Viola Davis

 

Directed by James Gunn

 

When watching, you immediately get that James Gunn is better suited for this than his predecessor, David Ayer. This movie is a standalone, and even though it has some characters from the 2016 Suicide Squad, the movie charts its own course.

For me, in the end, the movie is just a mild step up from the previous one. It lacked good story development momentum and didn’t make the best use of the characters. It feels like more things were happening than the characters could cover, leading to a lack of proper character arcs, which can make you bored quickly in the first half of the movie. Then, the comedy kicks in during the second half, which is funny at first, as the old jokes come off cool hearing them again. Then it continues to churn them out until you get bored of that too.

While the final product is like a gory, funny episode of A Thousand Ways to Die, the movie doesn’t gel all its parts together to make it a fun watch or something truly meaningful.

As we know, the Suicide Squad are the villains who get sent to do the things the heroes are too goody-goody to do. This time, the government wants them to go into the country of Corto Maltese after the government is overthrown by an anti-American regime. It turns out the American government has some things in Corto Maltese that they don’t want the world to know. Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) sends a new team to go to the country and destroy a science facility there. The first team didn’t do a good job, and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) got captured. The second team, led by Robert DuBois/Bloodsport (Idris Elba), was sent to finish the job.

It is this team that we follow, and when they find out that Quinn is still alive and needs help, they drop what they’re doing to go save her. She joins up with the team heading to the facility to complete the task they were given. But as formulaic as these movies can get, things take a turn, and it turns out that even in their team, not everyone is who they seem, and not everything is as it seems.

Well, if you choose to go see this film, just note its main concern seems to be how best to kill these people, aiming for a gory result that leaves the individuals dismembered. You can find this at the cinemas or on HBO Max.