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The Suicide Squad Movie Review

The Suicide Squad is a 2021 superhero film directed by James Gunn and starring Margot Robbie, John Cena and Idris Elba. It’s a solid, but somewhat disappointing flick.

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“We’re all going to die.

I hope so.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.“

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A task force of convicts are sent to destroy a Nazi-era laboratory and encounter the giant alien Starro. After the 2016 rather disastrous adaptation of this material, through a string of unusually lucky circumstances, Warner Bros. hired James Gunn to write and direct another Suicide Squad movie, and after five years, it has finally been released to great word of mouth and amazing reviews.

I personally had expected so much more before watching the actual film. It’s solid, but some glaring flaws prevented it from reaching greatness that it obviously aspired to reach. Let’s first start with the plot itself. Although clearly much better than its predecessor, this is still not an especially great story, though thematically speaking, I was quite impressed with what Gunn has done.

The island nation being Latin American was a cliché for sure and most of the storyline was predictable and very pedestrian. However, the themes are surprisingly mature for a superhero movie, though it doesn’t quite hit home on them as strongly as I would have liked. But Gunn here made a definite statement against American foreign policy and intervention that is downright criminal in the eventual turn of events. There are some lines here that emphasize America’s brutality in handling foreign conflicts and I truly admired that element.

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But that entire third act with Starro was simply too ludicrous to me. I get that this is a superhero movie, but they didn’t need to go to this overly silly tone. Starro could have been discarded from the plot and it should have honestly. I also strongly disliked the use of gore in the movie. It was just done for the sake of being edgy, but in actuality the various body dismembering moments mostly felt unfunny and simply unnecessary.

I did not care all that much for Harley Quinn in this movie. After her excellent animated show that she’s received recently, the bar has been raised for her character and this movie simply did not meet those high standards. Margot Robbie is still terrific in the role and she has her moments, but overall she needed to have been funnier and more badass. Also, her role felt perfunctory way too much in the context of the whole plot.

Idris Elba fares much better as Bloodsport. He is magnetic and quite memorable in the role, and he should definitely be receiving more blockbuster action roles in the future as he is great at them. Peacemaker is also pretty good and John Cena is surprisingly funny in this role, but even more could have been done with this amusing character.

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Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller is much less memorable this time around while Rick Flag and all of the other characters are very forgettable. King Shark has some good moments, but again not all that many. The acting is strong as is the direction, the cinematography is competent and for the most part the action is very well executed. However, the humor needed to have been less sparse as that opening with that Weasel character was so hilarious that I’d expected the whole flick would be like that, but eventually it settled on action instead of comedy more to middling results.