The Suicide Squad Review

So, the long-awaited, James Gunn-helmed sequel to the 2016 disaster finally came out. Did it improve upon the studio-meddled first film? Yes, yes, and yes. Though The Suicide Squad is far from perfect, mainly due to some writing issues, it is an extremely fun, gory romp.

Diving into my positives, my biggest one has to be the spectacle of the action. It is nearly flawless. I seriously don't think there is a single action sequence that I would have changed. The CGI characters and environments are exceptional. One major criticism that myself and others give DCEU films is the poor CGI present in many films such as Wonder Woman 1984, the original Suicide Squad, and the theatrical Justice League. Given the amount of CGI present throughout the film, whether it is the characters such as King Shark and Starro, or the massive explosions and gore surrounding the protagonists, everything looked superb throughout the entire 132-minute runtime.

Gunn used the R rating to its full extent in the film. The brutality was just that brutal. The effects throughout looked good whether it was fake blood, exploding limbs, or slashes. Between The Suicide Squad, Zack Snyder's Justice League, and Logan, I am beginning to get tired of safe, PG-13 violence in many comic book films today.

The Suicide Squad has this small, completely non-important element of filmmaking called structure. This was entirely missing in the 2016 film. Though I believe that Gunn's decision to tell the film's narrative nonlinearly felt unnecessary, adding nothing to the way I perceived the story, the structure felt like a real film. Unlike films such as Pulp Fiction and Memento that use the nonlinear presentation of the narrative to intentionally disorient the audience or build intrigue, I feel that The Suicide Squad's use of this simply felt unnecessary. All that being said, this film actually felt like a real film, unlike the music video/action sequence amalgamation that 2016's Suicide Squad is infamously known for. It was refreshing, to say the least.

Continuing my theme of calling this film refreshing, the entire presentation of the film itself was fairly unique compared to what we have been getting from the comic book genre. Similar to Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy films, he simply isn't afraid to get weird and embrace the inherent goofiness of comics in general. I mean Starro is the main villain in this film, freaking Starro.

One of my biggest praises to Gunn has to be his ability to take these obscure characters from both Marvel and DC and using them to their full potential on-screen. Characters such as King Shark, Polkadot Man, and Ratcatcher 2 work well in this film. Though I don't think that the character-writing is particularly deep or emotionally stimulating, they were fun enough to watch in between captivating action scenes. Characters such as Rick Flagg, in particular, are handled much better in this.

Diving into my negatives, my biggest one is a common one in many comic book films, especially DCEU films. That is the villain(s). All three main ones are extremely weak. The two human antagonists, The Thinker and the Corto Maltese leader were both uninteresting. At the end of the day, their motives were simply power, nothing more, nothing less. Starro, the main CGI villain, was fun enough simply due to the wackiness of his presence. If Starro was paired with a better human antagonist, I feel that the film would have benefitted greatly.

A minor nitpick would be the humor. The humor was good for the most part (roughly 75% of it landed for me), however, some running jokes simply overstayed their welcome. One with Polkadot Man, in particular, would have worked best as a one-off joke, not a recurring joke throughout the film.

My final negative is the way Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn is handled in the film. I've enjoyed Robbie's performances in all three of her films in the DCEU. However, she feels wasted in this film. This is mainly due to her having a nearly inconsequential subplot that could have been removed from the film entirely. Given that she was one of only four returning characters from the first film, I wanted more from her character in the film.

The Suicide Squad is the best version of the group that we will most likely get on film, and to be honest, I'm perfectly fine with it. James Gunn knew exactly what he wanted to make and followed through with it. Though there are some minor writing flaws that hinder my enjoyment of the film, I'd much rather get more unique comic book films like this over Black Widow and other safer entries in both the MCU and DCEU.

7.5/10