Title: The Suicide Squad
Rating: 4 Stars
The Suicide Squad is the Deadpool of the DC comic universe. Full of dark humor and extreme violence, it is not in any way shape or form child friendly. I’d seen the 2016 film Suicide Squad. It had a darker, more nihilist point of view than The Avengers Marvel films, so I did enjoy it more than those franchise films. I also was intrigued by the fact that this film was written and directed by James Gunn, most famed for the Guardian of the Galaxy films.
I’m not even sure if I should really go into the plot. Just as in the 2016 film, a group of malcontent prisoners with various unusual abilities are recruited to go on a suicide mission. Explosives are implanted in their head and they will be killed if they attempt to escape while on the mission. In the primary group is Bloodsport, a mercenary with an unusual set of weapons; Peacemaker, a Captain America type hero that happens to be a ruthless killer; Polka-Dot Man, who, yes, shoots polka-dots with lethal effect; Ratcatcher 2 (daughter of Ratcatcher), who can control legions of rats; and King Shark, a very hungry land-based shark sporting a dad-bod. Not originally part of this group but joining later is Harley Quinn.
Their mission is to infiltrate the island nation Corto Malta and to destroy the Nazi-created Project Starfish that is now seen as an existential threat to the world. Will they save the world? Will they earn their freedom?
I swear that it’s a coincidence, but just last week I watched (but did not have time to write about) what I believe to the patient zero of such films, the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen. I found it interesting that the patterns that were set forth in that film are still carrying forward over fifty years later. You have the tough, no nonsense commander overseeing the malcontents. Each member of the squad is sardonic and, other than the commander, disrespectful of authority. Over time, they bond together as a unit and, in some cases, some of these hardened criminals will sacrifice themselves for the squad.
I found the 2021 version much better than the 2016 film. It still has the same dark humor as the original. Although it’s been some time since I’ve seen the 2016 film, the banter in the 2021 seems fresher and more clever.
What sets the 2021 film apart is the fact that it does try to be more than just the typical trope of the suicide squad attempting the impossible to earn their freedom.
It makes statements about not only the superhero genre but about the US itself. In fact, if you think about it, there’s not much space separating the superhero genre from what Americans believe about their country. It’s no surprise that one of the all time great images of Captain America is him punching Hitler. Just as with superheros, Americans want to think that we’re always on the side of right. To defeat what we see as evil, we are willing to travel anywhere in the world and to take any steps necessary. What we sometimes lose sight of is that evil is not always clear cut, that not everyone wants us in their part of the world, and that our actions can have collateral damage.
You see that in the film. There’s a sequence where an American soldier has been captured and is being held by enemy forces. The team is ordered to go in, rescue the soldier, and terminate all enemy soldiers with ‘extreme prejudice’. They do so, only to discover the soldier sipping tea with the enemy soldier leader. It turns out that they actually weren’t enemy soldiers at all but were revolutionaries trying to overthrow the dictatorship. This is the kind of intelligence failure that happens in the real world that is never reflected in a superhero film.
The character Peacemaker also shows the dark side of American imperialism. His single minded goal is to pursue peace, regardless of the effects. At one point, he says something along of the lines of he will work for peace even if he has to kill everyone to get it. This is the kind of thinking that sometimes sets in with the military. In WWII, after a battle in the French town of Saint-Lo that destroyed some 95% of it, an American soldier commented, “We sure liberated the hell out of this place”.
Following in this vein, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Project Starfish itself has origins with the US. If you have even passing familiarity with US history, you know that we have a history of funding overseas adventures that comes back to bite us. You don’t have to look too much past our clandestine funding of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan during the 1980s and our decades long support of Saddam Hussein. The fact that the American government then tries to cover up their involvement is par for the course as well.
The fight scenes at the climax of the film also bring a sense of reality. Usually in films such as The Avengers, you see a city (usually New York City) getting destroyed in a violent clash between the superheroes and whatever world threatening monster they’re fighting. It’s all done in extravagant yet somehow sterile CGI. Here you see it as well, but more than just buildings are being destroyed, you see real people dying that are just going about their normal lives. A city destroyed is not a sanitary bloodless event.
Regarding the climax fight, I won’t spoil it since it’s so new, but fair to say that it is not the superheroes that actually save the day. I found that to be an interesting choice as well.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a deep film. This isn’t someone playing chess with death like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. However, I really like the fact that they didn’t just check the ensemble superhero boxes, call it good, and wait for the billion dollar box office to accumulate. This film had interesting things to say about the US, the power that we have, how we occasionally misuse it, and the effects that it has on the world.
dorkenstein 