Review: The Suicide Squad (Spoilers!)

'I'm a superhero!'

The Suicide Squad is back and while it may be easy to forget (or remember) the 2016 disaster that had an equally disastrous production it seems like it's finally creeped back into the cinemas with the latest outing by Guardians of the Galaxy director; James Gunn who fixes all the troubles that plagued the earlier version and while I have trouble remembering the 2016 version this Suicide Squad is more memorable not just with it's jokes but also with its casting the likes of Idris Elba and WWE wrestler John Cena. Despite it suffering at the box office due to the pandemic, The Suicide Squad is fun, quirky, and violent though I would say that it does have the generic build up of our heroes, in this case villains going up against the movie monster in the end it's an improvement of its earlier iteration. Yes, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad is great in giving us characters to care about and we see that in characters like Ratcatcher 2 (who we'll talk more about later in the review) and even Joel Kinneman's Rick Flagg who wasn't all there in the 2016 version, but it also gives us an atmosphere that isn't overly dark and the soundtrack is also a big part of the movie that makes it enjoyable. 

So what is The Suicide Squad about? It's about a group of villains who are unwillingly shipped off to a remote country in South America in order to get rid of any trace of a government project only known as Project Starfish. Of course the results due to their exploits is a bloody, violent yet fun take on the superhero (supervillains in this case) genre which has infected comic book movies and that's not really a bad thing.

The cast is stacked led by Idris Elba, Joel Kinneman and Margot Robbie and while these three did a great job the breakout star of the show is Daniela Melchior who plays Ratcatcher 2 who brings much humanity to the movie while Sylvester Stallone voices the adorable Nanaue a.k.a. King Shark who has an appetite for human flesh. David Dasmalchian is becoming a favorite of mine while John Cena is just hilarious as Peacemaker. 

Overall, the build-up to the monster fight in the end was predictable though it also gave us something new in which a few of the cast members died early in the first few minutes. This movie doesn't play it safe, nor does it overdo the humor, there's even traces of humanity injected into it and it never feels like it's being shoved down our throats. 

4/5 stars.