movie review: The Suicide Squad

 Okay, let's get this out of the way right now: "The Suicide Squad" is not--I repeat, NOT--a movie for kids.

Most movies based on comics try to entertain adults while also being watchable by their kids. (If you're one of the snobbish who automatically label these flicks "kid movies", you came to the wrong place.)

Not this one. We're talking about a sex scene, a moment of graphic nudity, and an overwhelming amount of graphic, graphic violence. I knew this going in, and it's nothing worse than I see on the various "Walking Dead" shows, but it still startled me. Maybe it's because I watch "Walking Dead" for the characters, and could happily do without the worst of the onscreen gore.

Okay, so that's out of the way. "The Suicide Squad" is a great movie, and if you can handle the gore I'd highly recommend it. Unless you're a movie snob.

 The idea behind the movie and it's kinda/sorta related previous version is that if you have a suicide mission, why risk beloved superheroes? Instead, the shady Task Force X recruits villains--mostly of the third rate variety. If they survive, they get decades taken off their sentences. If they try to run away, head of Task Force X Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, being suitably nasty), pushes a button and their head blows off.

We open with a team headed to a small island country, where they're dropped near the beach and things go immediately sideways. Then we got back in time, to see another team recruited at the same time, for the same mission: To destroy a top secret science project that's now in the hands of the island's new dictator.

Things go sideways for them, too, as happens on suicide missions. The survivors must face down the island's military to accomplish their job--which turns out to be something more than what they were told.

"The Suicide Squad" has, yes, those great effects and action, but if you're going to like the movie, it's for the characters. Here Idris Elba as reluctant leader Bloodsport, and Margot Robbie as the sanity-averse Harley Quinn, excel. Beyond that the heart of the movie comes from Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2 (guess what her super power is?), and David Dastmalchian as--wait for it--Pokda-Dot Man. Both have their backstories explored enough to be sympathetic characters.

 

The Suicide Squads are made up of real DC Comics characters, but the third rate ones--the ones Robin could take down without Batman's help. As such, almost any of them could be killed off at any moment, and many are, so once we're invested we end up on the edge of our seats. It's to the credit of everyone involved that we're left caring about, and rooting for, our "heroes". (By the way, the Big Bad in this movie was, in the comics, the Justice League's first villain.)

My score:

Entertainment value: 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. I had trouble getting past some of the more graphic violence, of which there was much, but as movies based on comic books go this was one of the better ones. And graphic or not, I can watch Harley Quinn's fighting moves all day long.

Oscar Potential: 2 out of 4 stars. I don't know ... maybe. The Academy does seem to like violent flicks, after all, and shouldn't there be an Oscar for fight choreography? But I doubt it will get a "Joker" level of critical acclaim.

(By the way, this was our first trip back to an indoor theater in two years ... we went at noon, and there were only two other people in the theater. This is one of those movies better appreciated on the big screen.)

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