THE SUICIDE SQUAD Review

“I got soul, but I’m not a soldier” 

    -- ALL THESE THINGS I’VE DONE, The Killers

In the odd chance you enjoy your life enough to not value the opinions of terminally online strangers, MCU fan culture remains unsatisfied with the lack of total subservience to their beloved corporate product. Specifically, the perception that these are just disposable time-wasters (which, if we’re being real here, they absolutely are).

As for my take on the whole mess? I’ll break it down like this. Yes! Conglomerates are primarily responsible for the denigration of popular fiction and it really sucks that a lot of tentpole blockbusters are becoming more interchangeable by the second.

Seriously, movies should show more imagination than jumbles of words and pictures cranked out on a monthly basis and it’s flat-out embarrassing that most of them don’t. In other words, I shouldn’t be worried that a Doctor Strange movie from Sam Raimi is going to reek of compromise from higher-ups.

High art, low art, none of those distinctions matter. We’ll all be worm food eventually. Let’s just enjoy the ride and like what we like. Not blindly so, granted. I despise that damned “let people enjoy things” meme as much as the next guy. Just a call to admit that we shouldn’t get self-conscious over the media we use to fill up our down time.

After all, a true cinephile has appropriately adjusted appetites for stimulants both primal and intellectual. After all, humans contain multitudes. Sure, I can wax lyrical about why a Wim Wenders picture speaks to the heart of every living soul’s inherent desire to travel and be loved by their fellow man. Other times, I want to dive head first into some brain-rotting trash. Or, to use music snob terminology, there are times where I can mature ruminations on a Neil Young record. On the other hand, there are times where I just want to get blitzed beyond belief with good chums and jam out to some Ramones or The Cramps.

So, what am I getting at here? If you couldn’t already put two-and-two together, James Gunn’s THE SUICIDE SQUAD belongs in the latter category and we need more movies like it.

Frankly, it’s what I would’ve expected Gunn to make with studio resources before GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY arrived onto the scene. A completely unrelenting, vicious and disgusting howl of adolescent weirdo rage. A movie so chaotic that it couldn’t have been made by anyone other than the former Troma alum. 

One-liners are thrown around from and between all these costumed maniacs as much as their own gleefully dismembered body parts. The camera swings around wild and free, perfectly combining the frenetic flow of the motion picture with the heightened static iconography of the printed page. All in service of a perpetually profane, no-frills, run-and-gun, meat-and-potatoes screenplay.

Yet, beneath it’s veneer of sniveling immaturity, there lies genuine anger at how militaries routinely view their infantry as little more than disposable cogs only worth as much as they can micromanage before all that’s left is their dog tags and uniforms. An entirely new perspective? No, but a refreshing one in a medium that tends to glorify (directly or not) these same power structures. Suffice it to say, if something like CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is like that photo of Nancy Pelosi kneeling  with a vague, passive caption that’s meant to inspire wine moms to go “OMG so brave”, this is like Joe Strummer making his unapologetic stands in between “Train in Vain” and “Stay Free”*.

Of course, this isn’t to say it devolves into a full-on soapbox lecture against the Military Industrial Complex and its various cover-ups. It’s just wallpaper. Window dressing. Something to tide you over in between the action beats and give you the viewer a way of giving a damn about characters whose superiors couldn’t care less about.

It also helps that the whole picture looks exquisite. Hell, the whole second act looks and kinda feels like a mid-2000s Tony Scott flick. Also, yay! We finally get a superhero movie for the first time in forever that doesn’t overcomplicate things vis-a-vis the costumes. Colorful, simple yet completely tactile. It doesn’t suffer the same issues as the Marvel stuff where everything is textures within textures and nothing truly stands out from the backgrounds. Thankfully, the same can be said about the film’s characters. Everyone’s going to have their standout character; but, my pick has to be Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag. Gunn and Kinnaman really reworked what was just a generic military dude in the immediate predecessor into a sort-of modern Lee Marvin pastiche (think the “tough love and loyal leader” demeanor he gave off in Sam Fuller’s THE BIG RED ONE).

Even the climax has less in common with the PlayStation cutscene looking sludge of, say, AVENGERS: ENDGAME and its ilk. Rather, it owes more to Atomic Age monster picture drive-in fare which (let’s be real here) is the best way to handle a beast only known as Starro the Conqueror.

Far from incendiary, yet by no means “safe”. Love or hate the picture, this is clearly James Gunn’s movie and it’s all the better for it. It’s the product of a snarling punk weirdo with an endearing heart. It’s a rallying cry to expect our cinematic junk food to, at the very least, be well-crafted and distinct. At the end of the day, I have to respect that. 

Is it his best work? Both GOTG flicks ultimately hit an emotionally resonant core that this really can’t by design and that’s fine. Again, multitudes.

Bottom line: Best comic book movie of its kind since KICK-ASS.

*which if I may add are the best Clash tunes, don’t @ me.