Hitting the superhero sweet spot
The Suicide Squad (R16, 132 mins) Directed by James Gunn Reviewed by
There’s been a debate running for years between the people who say that taking any superhero/ comic book movie too seriously is ludicrous, since the entire genre is basically only one small step away from being a Donald Duck cartoon anyway and the true fans, who will tell you that what Marvel, DC, various Japanese Manga houses and a few other players are doing, is basically creating a new mythology of gods and monsters, which, if done right, can be just as potent and influential as anything that Zeus and Maui and co ever got up to.
And to prove their point, they can even wave a popcorn-butterstained finger at the screen and say, ‘‘See . . . there’s Thor’’.
Me, I reckon I’ve got a foot in both camps now. So while I think the genre has thrown up its share of excellence – Batman Begins, Hellboy, Black Panther, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the last two Avengers movies at least are just objectively good movies by anyone’s measure – no one should get too worried if the occasional instalment doesn’t make any sense, as long as it’s still kinda fun and not too mean-spirited.
And then there are those other movies, the ones that manage to be a huge dose of dumb fun, but which still stack up as great storytelling, populated by terrific characters. Films like the first Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Thor: Ragnarok, Deadpool and Spider-Man: Homecoming. They don’t get the same respect from the so-called serious critics and the awards judges, but they seem to me to be exactly what a superhero movie should be. They make us laugh, but they still trade in some recognisable human emotion for their impact. The Suicide Squad, from Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, might not be quite up there with the very best of them. But, working with all the freedom an ‘‘R’’ rating gets you – and blessed with a cast with the collective comedy chops the DC stable has been sorely missing, I reckon this reboot of David Ayers’ catastrophically tedious 2016 Suicide Squad is at least sturdy enough to launch a few sequels and spin-offs.
And since DC has struggled to get any sort of sustainable series up on the screen since The Dark Knight trilogy wrapped, nine long years ago, that should be enough for now.
The Suicide Squad kicks off with a retread of the original premise. In a secret US prison, a group of enhanced, mutant, or just plain mad villains are offered the chance to be set free, or at least get a decade taken off their sentence, if they join a black-ops squad to fight for American and corporate interests overseas. It’s Mission: Impossible, but with a team of unbalanced and deeply scarred individuals.
Our heroes this time – Idris Elba’s taciturn mercenary Bloodsport, John Cena’s equally deadly Peacemaker, Sylvester Stallone’s voice-of-a-shark and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn – one of only a few characters welcomed back from the 2016 film – are sent to a fictitious South American island state to, well, do something about a threat so incomprehensibly daft it still makes me laugh thinking about it.
It’s maybe enough to say that exDoctor Who Peter Capaldi is the human villain here, which seems about right, since the monster he has unleashed wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of that show.
The Suicide Squad pretty much ticks all the boxes, and then some.
The film is genuinely funny, with a cast who know how to land a punchline. The action is thick and fast and that R rating allows Gunn to indulge in some cartoonish levels of violence and gore.
The Suicide Squad succeeds in exactly the same way the original Deadpool succeeded, by finding that sweet spot between gleefully stupid and deceptively smart – and sticking to it.