I have not seen Suicide Squad 2016 and so do not expect any references to it. There will probably be spoilers yada yada. You get the drill.
This movie hits a particular set of buttons that used to reach my funny bone. I will say that those buttons do not work as well as they used to.
I wanted to enjoy how blackly comic it is, but there was something familiar about it that I cannot shake. It all feels a little stale.
First, the good: this movie does not deviate from the idea that its central characters are bad. This movie is incredibly misanthropic - people die in horrible ways; the team’s taskmaster Amanda Waller is more frightening than the actual villains; there is a great sequence based around Bloodsport and Peacemaker trying to prove who is the better killer.
I enjoyed parts of the movie, and laughed throughout - Nathan Fillion’s appearance is hilariously underwhelming - but it never quite comes together.
While the plot is fairly simple, it feels over-long and there is a flabby middle where it seems like we are wandering around for a while. The movie tries to tie itself together with some heart and gravitas, but the movie does not quite earn it.
The inclusion of Harley Quinn never feels necessary - her subplot with the dictator has a great punchline, but otherwise she feels like she needs to be here because she was in the last movie.
The movie leans into being disgusting and unnerving - the Weasel, with his bug eyes, is annoying. The R rating means that Gunn's more extreme tendencies are on display, and some of it works. But there are also parts of the movie where it feels like Gunn pulling from the Guardians playbook - the group of unlikeable losers barring their hearts and souls - but the movie never finds the right path between these two poles.
We get his recurring theme - stated in dialogue by Taika Waititi's Ratchatcher - that everyone is important, even street rats. That idea does not have any emotional payoff here - probably because the Squad have been annihilating smaller versions of themselves. Another reason it hits awkwardly is that the movie also wants you to think about the island location in terms of US imperialism, and it clangs after the movie has been making jokes about how many of the locals have been killed.
What is frustrating is that the movie has a vague idea of what it wants to do. Take main character Bloodsport (Idris Elba). He finally does something for other people, and wins the respect of his daughter. It never quite works - possibly because their own previous interaction was establishing lines of conflict and respective bad childhoods. But that is all it is - she gives him his motivation to take the mission, and then at the end she sees a news report that he has saved the world. It feels like the coldest version of screenwriting 101.
The character of King Shark feels like a meta-textual homage/ripoff of Groot, from his monosyllabic dialogue to the casting of Vin Diesel's spiritual father Sylvester Stallone as the voice.
John Cena has never been that good at straight action hero, but this character - a fascist obsessed with ‘peace’ at the expense of anything else - is a weirdly perfect fit. He feels more like a narcissistic jock, obsessed with his own abilities and the warped code that he lives by. He is a solid third act obstacle, and Cena is legitimately frightening as he goes after his teammates.
The rest of the cast are all good but once again the script fails to fully utilise them. It feels like we barely get to know the other members of the team until we get some wedged- in backstory.
While it is entertaining, The SuicideSquad never quite coalesces the way it wants to.
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