Movie Review: Suicide Squad 2021

The Suicide Squad (2021)

I tried making two different versions of this review, but my computer kept crashing and deleting it, so... I'm sorry, you guys are getting a very truncated version because I'm kind of tired of writing about this movie over and over again. 

Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed The Suicide Squad. The 2021 movie, of course, not to be confused with the abomination that is the original Suicide Squad movie from 2016, which missed every single point that the Suicide Squad comic is all about. It's just such a shame that Suicide Squad 2021 came out both in the middle of the pandemic, and also right when people really didn't give a shit about the Suicide Squad. 

The movie opens up wonderfully, and since I didn't follow the lead-up to the movie, I had no idea which characters were in this movie... and we get to see the movie from Savant (played by Michael Rooker) as he gets sent to a mysterious island in the South American island of Corto Maltese alongside a bunch of DC comics' Z-lister villains, like Mongal, Javelin, Weasel, TDK and Blackguard. I only know the first three in that list, which is impressive of them to pull out some really random characters. All of whom who die! Including, to my shock, Captain Boomerang! But I guess anyone can die. 

In fact, the only two survivors of this team is Rick Flag and Harley Quinn, and Harley really does have main character/franchise mascot plot immunity. Again, the idea that people are dying by the droves, and that the mission is politically sensitive and set in another country, really makes so much more sense than 'oh hey crazy magic woman unleashed a demon in the middle of the town, let's send criminals'.

Meanwhile, the real Suicide Squad is led by the assassin Bloodsport (basically a rewritten Deadshot complete with him being a dad), the insanely patriotic and loyal to USA Peacemaker (a character that I have no idea about before this movie and I'm surprised I don't), and wacky colourful characters Ratcatcher 2, Polka-Dot Man and King Shark. King Shark is a shark! All three of the wackies are fun ones, with Polka-Dot Man having some of the best lines in the movie, King Shark being adorable by dint of existing, and Ratcatcher being pretty damn zany in her own right. 

Team B of the Suicide Squad are pretty brutal as they massacre a bunch of rebels, and as they regroup with Rick Flag (who they mistakenly thought was captured by the guerilla in the island) who had befriended the rebel leader Sol Soria. A major appeal of the movie is Bloodsport, Peacemaker and Rick Flag all being very diametrically opposed in what they view to be the right thing to do, with Peacemaker being the insanely loyal attack dog to Amanda Waller and the U.S. government; Peacemaker seeing it all as just a job to get out of jail (but developing a dad instinct towards Ratcatcher) and Rick Flag being more 'good' than 'lawful'. They decide to infiltrate the mysterious lab 

Harley Quinn, meanwhile, has her own bizarre subplot where she gets kidnapped and brought to the Corto Maltese dictator Silvio Luna, who is a manchild who falls in love with her and eventually gets killed by Harley Quinn after some sex and intel. Silvio gets replaced by the bird-burning bastard Mateo Suarez, an even more military-minded dictator than his predecessor. 

Harley regroups with the rest of the Suicide Squad, who after some wacky hijinks and murderizing, ends up entering the Jotunheim project to find the Thinker, who is experimenting with 'Project Starfish'... which, of course, as any DC fan would know, is the gloriously dorky Starro the Conqueror, a giant-ass starfish alien that uses smaller versions of itself to telepathically possess humans. There are some rather honestly unnecessary rape jokes tossed in for the Thinker, but I guess we're supposed to root for him when Starro ends up ripping the Thinker apart during his escape.

Starro is a fun B-movie giant kaiju monster threat, but the best part of the movie has to be the confrontation between Rick Flag, Peacemaker and Bloodsport. Rick Flag finds a hard drive with evidence of how Starro was brought to Earth by the US government, and was secretly sponsoring the experiments in hopes of creating a superweapon. Meanwhile, Peacemaker, who wants peace but only for the US, ends up killing Rick Flag to cover up the evidence. 

As Starro escapes during the resulting battle and causes the Jotunheim facility to collapse, the drive falls into the hands of Ratcatcher 2. Peacemaker, jackass that he is, tries to execute the young adolescent woman... but Bloodsport, who developed a bond with Ratcatcher 2 during the earlier scenes, ends up confronting Peacemaker, shooting him (seemingly for dead, though Peacemaker is revealed to be alive after the credits to star in his spinoff show) and takes the drive. 

Starro leaves and starts going Godzilla on Corto Maltese. Amanda Waller orders the Suicide Squad to leave, but, of course, it can't be a superhero show without the giant threat being taken down. Waller gets hit in the head by her subordinates, allowing Bloodsport and company to try and fight Starro. For all the good it does, because poor Polka-Dot Man gets squished by it. Ratcatcher 2 eventually manages to kill Starro by using the flood of rats in the city and feeding them all into the hole Harley Quinn pokes in Starro's eyeball. Corto Maltese is freed, Bloodsport forces Waller to release his team in exchange for the contents of the drive.

And... it's a short summary, but the movie itself is pretty fun with its gory sense of humour. I really do think that the Harley Quinn subplot is kind of redundant -- but Margot Robbie is always fun in her role as much as I really do feel mostly disdain at the modernized Harley. Lots of great moment especially if you are a fan of dark, gory comedy like I am, and definitely a movie that's underrated. It's certainly one of the entries of the DCEU that I would genuinely feel is a strong movie through and through.