The Suicide Squad | Little White Lies

The Sui­cide Squad

29 Jul 2021 / Released: 30 Jul 2021

Words by Lillian Crawford

Directed by James Gunn

Starring Idris Elba, John Cena, and Margot Robbie

A woman with blonde hair and intense expression, wearing a red and blue outfit, reaching forward.
A woman with blonde hair and intense expression, wearing a red and blue outfit, reaching forward.
2

Anticipation.

Not convinced that having James Gunn on board will make this any better than Suicide Squad.

1

Enjoyment.

Not a single gag lands and most of them offend. This might actually be worse than the first one.

1

In Retrospect.

Make. It. Stop.

James Gunn dou­bles down on his crass brand of humour in this charm­less, unfun­ny and facile fran­chise redo.

The Sui­cide Squad is, in all but name, a sequel to David Ayer’s 2016 crit­i­cal cat­a­stra­fuck Sui­cide Squad. DC is des­per­ate to wipe the slate clean – we know this because the title is pre­ced­ed by the def­i­nite arti­cle, a promise to get things right the sec­ond time round.

Scarce­ly any rem­nants of the first film have been retained, except Mar­got Robbie’s Harley Quinn, whose solo spin-off Birds of Prey was a wel­come break from the gloomy streets of Gotham. There’s also Vio­la Davis repris­ing Aman­da Waller to pro­vide vil­lain­ous expo­si­tion aplen­ty as she recruits a new band of mis­cre­ants to do the US government’s dirty work.

Of course, there’s a prece­dent for mess­ing things up at DC. We now have two ver­sions of 2017’s Jus­tice League: an abysmal two-hour snooze­fest from Joss Whe­don and a grey-washed, dou­ble-length director’s cut”. The release of the lat­ter has even inspired a not-in-any-way-laugh­able #ReleaseTheAy­er­Cut cam­paign, which claims that Ayer was pre­vent­ed from devel­op­ing his opus by mon­ey-grub­bing stu­dio execs. Maybe they’ll keep qui­et now Warn­er Bros has sup­pos­ed­ly giv­en the fans exact­ly what they want.

Attempts to canon­ise Zack Sny­der as an auteur have been extend­ed to The Sui­cide Squad’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign, with The hor­ri­bly beau­ti­ful mind of James Gunn” cit­ed as the film’s source. This is a know­ing state­ment – Gunn joined the project after being fired from Dis­ney, where he was devel­op­ing the Guardians of the Galaxy series, for a num­ber of old tweets in which he made jokes about 911, pae­dophil­ia, rape, and the Holocaust.

While Gunn has said those jokes” were borne of provoca­tive imma­tu­ri­ty, it’s exact­ly the sort of humour The Sui­cide Squad runs on – rain is described as angels’ splooging”, John Cena’s Peace­mak­er is told to eat a field of dicks”, and so on. It’s about as anti-woke as you could pos­si­bly fath­om, and there’s a com­plete dis­re­gard for what might be offen­sive to some viewers.

Three men, one wearing a yellow shirt, one a white vest, and one a light blue shirt, standing in a dark outdoor setting with a large fire in the background.

One of the biggest prob­lems with 2016’s Sui­cide Squad was that you didn’t care about any of the char­ac­ters. In The Sui­cide Squad there’s a baf­fling dichoto­my of vil­lains who are entire­ly expend­able and those who seem to be inde­struc­tible. Sylvester Stal­lone fills in for Vin Diesel in the mono­syl­lab­ic Groot role as King Shark, who is shot, eat­en alive and crushed by sev­er­al build­ings, while oth­ers explode in a splat­ter of guts at the slight­est touch. Gunn seems to have recy­cled a lot of the gags from the Guardians films with a few more F‑bombs dropped in to reas­sure us that this is an adult” movie.

Gunn does try to give his char­ac­ters emo­tive, relat­able back­sto­ries, but it always feels heavy-hand­ed. We meet Idris Elba’s Blood­sport in prison where he’s being told by his daugh­ter what a bad father he’s been. Dad­dy issues is a run­ning theme – new­com­er Daniela Mel­chior became Rat­catch­er 2 to fol­low her dead father’s foot­steps. It’s no won­der their rela­tion­ship was messed up – the cam­era pans to reveal he’s Tai­ka Wait­i­ti. Mel­chior gives the most com­pelling per­for­mance, although every time she shows human feel­ing she’s mocked by Blood­sport or Peace­mak­er as a Mil­len­ni­al”.

Quinn, the Squad’s only oth­er female mem­ber, is treat­ed with sim­i­lar dis­re­gard. Unlike Cathy Yan’s mul­ti­di­men­sion­al depic­tion of the char­ac­ter in Birds of Prey, here Rob­bie is reduced to the object of a pubes­cent boy’s mas­tur­ba­to­ry fan­tasies. She spends most of the film tied up, and is hyper-fem­i­nised by Cor­to Mal­tese dic­ta­tor Sil­vio Luna (Juan Diego Bot­to) in a red ball gown which becomes increas­ing­ly eroti­cised as it’s torn apart.

We’re sup­posed to buy that Quinn could sud­den­ly be con­vinced to set­tle down and live like a princess to accom­mo­date the film’s total­ly unnec­es­sary sex scene. Sud­den­ly she’s kick­ing colo­nial butt, squeez­ing men’s heads between her thighs, before being reduced to being the sec­ond stu­pid­est char­ac­ter next to the shark guy. Such errat­ic char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is exhaust­ing, and symp­to­matic of The Sui­cide Squad’s insis­tence on being a mind-numb­ing sen­so­ry assault.

Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, The Sui­cide Squad looks noth­ing like its pre­de­ces­sor. The first half is shot like a 2000s sit­com, replete with Peter Capal­di reviv­ing his Mal­colm Tuck­er-glare as The Thinker. The sec­ond goes full-blown kai­ju (we know this because some­one says it), with a mon­ster vil­lain described at the start as being like a but­t­hole, even though in actu­al­i­ty it resem­bles a col­lec­tion of vul­vas. The Sui­cide Squad is crass, noisy and brash – a dis­turb­ing glimpse inside the mind of James Gunn.

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