The Suicide Squad 2021 review: Delightfully deranged and viscerally violent

A much derided 2016 superhero blockbuster has had a do-over with a new creative vision. But the big question is, can it correct the mistakes of the former?

There’s more to distinguish between David Ayres’ 2016 superhero hit Suicide Squad and James Gunn’s 2021 do-over – The Suicide Squad – than just the extra “The”.

Both movies are degrees of deranged – Cara Delevingne belly dancing for almost the whole final act of Ayres’ movie was madness. It was the only memorable thing, and not in a good way.

Gunn’s movie is wondrously wild, delightfully deranged and viscerally violent – and by viscerally, we mean actual viscera where bodies are ripped apart, blown up and munched on, blood and guts splattered everywhere. It’s not for the queasy.

The Suicide Squad is what happens when Gunn is unleashed from the confines of a family friendly rating, and this movie earns that MA15+ classification. The body count is astronomical and there are so many creative ways to die.

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The Suicide Squad stars Joel Kinnaman, Alice Braga, Daniela Melchior, Idris Elba and John Cena.

The Suicide Squad assembles a glittering cast which includes Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman and the voice of Sylvester Stallone as a peckish, anthropomorphic shark monster (“Nom nom!”).

The premise is a familiar one. The US government, under the auspices of Davis’ severe agent Amanda Waller, recruits a team of villains to complete a dangerous mission, in exchange for reduced or suspended sentences for their crimes.

They are to infiltrate the fictional island of Corto Maltese, whose monarchy was overthrown in a military coup d’état. Waller wants to ensure the destruction of Jotunheim, a Nazi-era prison that conducts apparently horrific experiments.

Among the reluctant recruits are Robert DuBois/Bloodsport (Elba), a mercenary with razor-sharp aim and a fractious relationship with his daughter Tyla (Storm Reid), Christopher Smith/Peacemaker (Cena), a nationalistic assassin who will kill anyone to achieve “peace”, Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), who controls rodents with a nifty device, and King Shark (Stallone), whose penchant for human flesh gets in the way of the friendships he desires.

And, of course, there’s Harley Quinn, Robbie’s chaotic, unpredictable trickster who’s upgraded her baseball bat to fiercer weaponry.

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The Suicide Squad is Margot Robbie’s third DCEU movie.

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The story itself is predictable and follows the familiar rhythm of superhero movies of the mission set-up, the mission gone awry and the mission’s final, bombastic act. It is indeed bombastic when the adversary is a giant alien starfish – Starro the Conqueror – that is excitedly proclaimed as a kaiju.

The physical scale of Starro is indicative of the scale of The Suicide Squad. It’s crazy and over-the-top but Gunn’s playful – and consistent – tone matches its outlandishness.

It harnesses the anarchy of crazy of its characters with its absurdist dialogue, and a character such as Abner Krill/Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) who does what it says on the box.

Even a straighter character such as Bloodsport has an element of ferocious danger about him, in that you believe he’s an antihero and not some morally compromised do-gooder. Elba’s considerable screen presence helps too.

It’s extremely difficult to balance out a large ensemble cast that also includes the likes of Jai Courtney, Peter Capaldi, Nathan Fillion, Sean Gunn, Michael Rooker and Pete Davidson, so it’s inevitable that some characters are better serviced than others.

James Gunn’s version of The Suicide Squad stands separate to David Ayres’ 2016 version.

Gunn had the wisdom to use as much of Robbie’s Harley as possible, not just because she’s a fan favourite that serves as one of the links between this film and the rest of DCEU, but also because you can always rely on her to inject energy into any scene. To that end, Harley gets some of the best action sequences of the movie.

And there’s a surprising pathos in multiple character arcs that has to do with parenting that adds a layer of sentimentality to the action adventure while the movie as a whole, for all of its fun, violence and spectacle, has a sharp critique of the callousness of US foreign policy.

Gunn didn’t have to do much for it to be better than Ayres’ movie (and credit to Ayres, he’s semi-disowned the 2016 release), but expect this to be the definitive The Suicide Squad movie from now on.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Suicide Squad is in cinemas now (excluding lockdown areas)

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