Movie Review: Suicide Squad - Hell to Pay [2018]

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay [2018]

It's been some time since we've done one of these, huh? Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is the 31st DC Universe Animated Original Movies (whoo, what a mouthful), and another one of the movies set in the Quasi-New-52 continuity started with Justice League: War (this includes Son of Batman, Throne of Atlantis, Batman v Robin, Batman: Bad Blood, JLA vs Teen Titans, Justice League Dark and Teen Titans: Judas Contract), and the Suicide Squad's second fray into the DCAOM movies after 2013's Assault on Arkham -- something marketed as a Batman feature more than a Suicide Squad movie. 

Now with more brand recognition -- even if it's for the infamously trainwreck that was the 2016 movie -- DC releases an R-rated animated feature called Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay. And it's... it's quite good! Sure, it does nothing particularly new, and as someone who's read a lot of the Suicide Squad comics, and watched a lot of DC cartoons, what happens in this movie isn't anything particularly new or fresh for me. Hell, even the main storyline of this movie is an amalgamation of the "Get Out of Hell" card from Secret Six and several different Suicide Squad runs. but it's done relatively well that I honestly don't mind.

The opening scene has a pretty neat little rundown of Deadshot, Count Vertigo, Punch and Jewelee going on a normal "stop the villain with sensitive information!" mission, the villain in this case being Tobias Whale (which is reccently seen as the main villain in CW's live-action Black Lightning). We've got your expected double-crosses, a bunch of deaths and the demonstration of the deadly head-bombs implanted in the heads of the Suicide Squad members with multiple members of the team dying and only Deadshot surviving to return home to Belle Reve. And the movie does delight in the amount of gore they are allowed to stuff into an R-rated animated movie, with explicit dismemberment and a particularly graphic bit when Count Vertigo's head explodes. 

We then get to the real meat of the movie, where Waller puts together a team. We've got Suicide Squad veterans Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang and Bronze Tiger (the latter is in practically every incarnation of the comic book team, as much as he was left out of the movies) as well as Killer Frost and Copperhead... and the movie actually keeps all of them alive and doesn't kill any of them off until the final ten minutes or so! Even Copperhead, who I pegged as most likely character to die almost immediately. And, yes, Harley, Boomerang and Copperhead care essentially reduced to "crazy girl", "jackass Aussie" and "creepy snake-man", but they're fun enough and far more distinctive than most of the side-characters from the 2016 live-action movie. 

As the team goes off on a beat-up RV on a road-trip for an off-the-books mission to recover the Get Out of Hell card, we see that the story revolves mainly around Deadshot, Bronze Tiger and Killer Frost, albeit in a more detached way. Deadshot just wants to get back to his little girl, despite hating what he does as a member of the squad. Bronze Tiger has a code of honour, but we learn of his backstory later on where he apparently went berserk because during an infiltration mission into the League of Assassins his identity got discovered and his fiance was killed (Slade gets a cameo!) and he went on a murder-spree, and he ends up seeing the Squad as a form of atonement. Frost... Frost just ends up being a bit more ill-defined as the "only for myself" kind of woman, but it's still pretty neat. All three end up getting a fair bit of screentime and characterization throughout the movie, and both Deadshot and Tiger in particular are extremely well-defined despite their clashing world-views.

There are three parties after the Get Out of Hell card. The Suicide Squad, a group of tosser villains led by Reverse-Flash, as well as the decidedly more organized army led by Vandal Savage. And as the Suicide Squad learns from a male stripper that was a former Dr. Fate (surprisingly, this movie features a lot of male fanservice and little to no female fanservice beyond a bit where Knockout gets out of her bath) that Scandal Savage, daughter of the immortal conqueror Vandal Savage, stole the card from him. Scandal and her lover Knockout are the primary antagonists for the second act of this movie as they kidnap a villainous surgeon, Professor Pyg (recently brought to live-action in Gotham) and are planning to use the card to ensure Vandal Savage's immortality. Meanwhile, Reverse-Flash and his duo of flunkies, Blockbuster and Silver Banshee, want to get the card for their own sinister purposes.

Scandal and Knockout are slightly flat characters although they bless us with a very awesome fight scene in the apartment where the animators had absolute fun giving them really cool action scenes, but their story ends up cut short when Vandal Savage orders a "kill them all, the woman is expendable" and even shoots a wounded Knockout, causing Scandal to eventually desert him and betray his base to the Suicide Squad.

Meanwhile, Reverse-Flash ends up being revealed as the same Reverse-Flash from the Flashpoint movie, and it's clear throughout the movie that he's hurting and nowhere as fast as he was before. We even had a point where he had to drive a truck around. He wants the Get Out of Hell card for himself, and ends up getting Killer Frost to work for him after vibrating the bomb out of her head. 

It's a pretty well-done game of cat-and-mouse as all three organizations fight over the plot device, and by the end of the movie various characters quickly get taken out. Reverse-Flash arrives and kills Vandal Savage by ripping the card out of his chest; Killer Frost double-crosses everyone and kills Blockbuster and Banshee; Waller remotely blows Copperhead up in order to kill the treacherous Killer Frost; and the showdown ends up happening between Deadshot, Bronze Tiger and Reverse-Flash. And it's a nice culmination towards  the story between Deadshot and Bronze Tiger, especially considering their conflict earlier in the movie where Tiger berates Deadshot for being an honourless piece of shit. After killing Reverse-Flash in a pretty damn cool manner, Deadshot places the Get Out of Hell card on Bronze Tiger's chest, allowing the tortured vigilante to pass on in peace. It's a pretty bittersweet ending, and one that really shows off Deadshot's "loyal to only those who are friends to me" bit without turning him into a full blown-out hero like the 2016 movie. 

Overall, there's not a lot in Hell to Pay that really innovates on a superhero formula. Beyond giving some characters like Scandal Savage a voiced, animated appearance, it's a pretty standard storyline with a pretty high bodycount and a standard -- if well-told -- storyline. It's definitely pretty, with definitely well-done voice acting. Worth checking out, and, in my opinion, one of the better DCAOM movies.

(Maybe someday we'll talk about the older ones? I guess when I'm finished with the live-action stuff for this year). 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• I'm not going to go through every character's backstory since I'm sure that between all of the DC comics TV shows and cartoons I've done before, I have covered most, if not all, of the characters involved in this show. But the storyline revolving around the "Get Out of Hell Free" card was a major part of the 2000's Secret Six comics, which majorly featured Deadshot, Scandal Savage and Knockout -- as well as where the romance between the latter two originated from.
• Cameos! In addition to the major characters featured, we've got Black Manta, Two-Face and Deathstroke in various minor roles. The girl Deadshot mistakes for Zoe is Rebecca Langstrom, Man-Bat's daughter previously seen in the Son of Batman movie.
• "Steel Maxim", the Dr. Fate featured here, is completely original to the animated movie.
• Amanda Waller being thin is a constant criticism of her appearance post the New 52 reboot, something that a significant portion of the fandom (myself included) absolutely loathed. The movie cracks a joke at this when Deadshot makes a crack about how Waller herself hates being thin... something that takes a bit of a more sinister tone when it's revealed that she's suffering from a terminal disease. 
• The Task Force X scientist that implants the bombs makes a crack about the "Ten-Eyed Man" apparently being killed during the implantation of the bombs. The Ten-Eyed Man is a minor Batman villain infamous in the fandom due to his silly gimmick.
• On the pad that the scientist uses to implant the bombs is a note about how an option is an 'elbow bomb'. In the original Ostrander run, the bombs were implanted in the Suicide Squad members' arms and it's having their arms blown off that's the threat before subsequent comics moved it to a head-bomb. 
• Steel Maxim makes a brief note about how the new Dr. Fate is a woman -- in the comics, the second and third Dr. Fates were both women -- Linda Strauss and Inza Nelson, respectively.
• Reverse-Flash is one of the few characters in the New 52 to remember events from the original continuity that was wiped out during the comics' Flashpoint, although he wasn't running around with a hole in his head.