In many critics’ and audiences’ opinions, 2016’s Suicide Squad was, shall we say, “not the best.” Yet, in numerous ways, it’s an underrated DC Comics-based movie that seems to have been mitigated most especially by people’s irritation with Jared Leto as Joker. At the same time, it’s difficult to now imagine any other version of that character playing against Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. Evidently, Robbie herself is aware that she’s made the role too iconic with her in it for anyone else to be willing to take a stab—hence, her reappearance in the latest standalone reboot called The Suicide Squad. Notice the distinction between movies thanks to use of “The.”
Where David Ayer (who would also go on to executive produce the Harley Quinn vehicle Birds of Prey) favored a more linear approach to the storyline, the latest director to take on Task Force X (a.k.a. Suicide Squad), James Gunn, has opted for something slightly less “straightforward” in its froth (at least by mainstream comic book movie standards). Although the studio had originally planned for Ayer to direct another film based on the characters, eventually Gunn stepped in despite his firing controversy during the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 era.
It’s clear from the outset that Gunn has a darker approach to the material, made immediately manifest by use of a particular song. While Suicide Squad begins with The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” as the camera pans to Black Site in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, The Suicide Squad opens with Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” (freshly trending thanks to Guy Ritchie’s misogynistic Wrath of Man). It continues to play as we’re introduced to Brian Durlin a.k.a. Savant (Michael Rooker), whose casual killing of a canary (but don’t worry, it gets karmic justice soon after) during the first moments of the film makes reference to a period in his history when he kidnapped Birds of Prey’s Black Canary. Made to join Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) latest assemblage of a ragtag team, he’s quickly outfitted with a detonator in his head before being released for the mission.
The pacing of the movie, as well as the use of an Osprey to airlift the crew out of Belle Reve mimics that of Suicide Squad’s at first, until Harley shows up on the aircraft without even half as much fanfare as she was given in the first version of the movie. In that one, Harley is introduced, appropriately, to the tune of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” as she does some acrobatics in her “Burn After Use” tank top. It’s an indelible moment befitting a character of such status. But perhaps part of Gunn’s aim in this latest edition is to allow other Suicide Squad members their time to shine, even if Harley still remains the highlight.
Deadshot (Will Smith) in Suicide Squad seems to have been replaced by the leading man charisma of Bloodsport (Idris Elba), complete with a similar deadweight daughter to make him do whatever the government wants him to if leveraged. As one government official asks Amanda in the original movie, “These are villains, Amanda. What makes you think you can control them?” She replies, “Because getting people to act against their own self-interest for the national security of the United States is what I do for a living.” This time around, the “national security” of the U.S. is being threatened by forces on Corto Maltese, a fictional island off the coast of South America named ostensibly in honor of a certain comic book sea captain. The black ops involved in infiltrating this nation remind one of the U.S.’ infamous Iran-Contra affair, which makes The Last Thing He Wanted perhaps a better movie choice to watch for this purpose.
On that note, rather than “arms” being smuggled in by the U.S., it’s another kind of weapon entirely—minds. Specifically a war criminal mind like The Thinker a.k.a. Gaius Greves (Peter Capaldi), who can be found “after hours” at a “gentlemen’s club” called La Gatita Amable (this being a tidbit Amanda doles out to the squad in their pursuit). Intended to hold up a mirror to the U.S. regarding its placation of Nazis after World War II (so long as they could provide something worth the U.S. government’s while), Greves is at the helm of Project Starfish. A code name for Starro the Conqueror, an alien entity being held and experimented on within the confines of an impenetrable facility called Jötunheim. And so, not only does Gunn draw on the political history of the U.S. in terms of appeasing Nazi Germany by allowing certain scientists and fallen officials sanctuary in South American countries, but also its backdoor dealings in nations like Nicaragua.
In this sense, the not so underlying message of The Suicide Squad is much clearer than it is in the first, with Bloodsport spelling it out to Peacemaker (John Cena) when he accuses, “‘Liberty’ is just your excuse to do whatever you want. Whether that’s to eat a beach full of dicks or killin’ folks.” Indeed, Peacemaker is the very embodiment of American “savior” culture, believing that, to sustain peace, violence has to ensue more often than not. But to quote a famous protest sign, “Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.”
In the wake of a government coup in Corto Maltese that overthrows the once in-power Herrera family, a man named Silvio Luna (Juan Diego Botto) takes over, at last able to learn about the true nature of the monster being kept inside Jötunheim when Greves shows him footage of the creature. He tells Silvio and his henchmen that Starro is able to create “extensions of itself” which can then take hosts and “feed on their consciousness.” Ergo Starro is an ideal entity for any country to weaponize for the purpose of mind control—more to the point, creating armies in a similar fashion to how Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) did in Suicide Squad.
Harley Quinn, given essentially her own offshoot story as the sole survivor (apart from Rick Flag [Joel Kinnaman, also reprising his role]) of the decoy mission, can’t help falling in love yet again with a nefarious fuckboy. This time it’s the “president” (read: dictator), Silvio, who flatters Harley by dressing her in a Madonna in “La Isla Bonita”-inspired red dress and complimenting her status as a symbol against “American oppression.” A montage of the two bonding as “Whistle for the Choir” by The Fratellis plays eventually leads Silvio to lay his cards out on the table and ask if Harley will be his wife. She responds, “You are so freaking hot” before jumping his bones.
When they’re finished, practically destroying the entire room, Silvio looks out at Jötunheim wistfully and explains to Harley, “Nazis came here seeking asylum after World War II. They built Jötunheim to continue their unorthodox experiments. Until the Herrera family accepted the bounty on the Nazis’ heads and killed them all.” As he tells her the Herrera family was only able to maintain power by fortifying the lore of a dark creature that killed thousands of dissidents and political enemies (something that also happened in real life in South America under the U.S.’ watchful eye), Harley has a revelation: she needs to stop going for her “type.” So it is that she informs Silvio, “Recently I made a promise to myself that the next time I got a boyfriend, I’d be on the lookout for red flags. And if I saw any, I would do the healthy thing and I would murder him.” Which she does, even if it’s a bit hard to believe that a villain of her caliber would give a shit about children enough to say, “And killing kids? Kind of a red flag.” But in the spirit of DC and Marvel’s new angles on humanizing illustrious villains by giving them an origin story that better explains why they’re so fucked up/evil, Harley notes, as though speaking on behalf of every American, “All the cruelty…tears you apart after a while.”
Upon slaying her erstwhile beloved, Harley is taken prisoner yet again. But like a deranged Mary Poppins spectacle (namely the one where Mary and Bert are mixed among animated beings during the “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” sequence), Harley stars in the first of two truly unforgettable scenes of the film when she proceeds to free herself from a second capture by Silvio’s army. After being tortured and singing Louis Prima’s “Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” to herself (before the real song starts to play on the soundtrack), she uses her thighs to choke the current soldier holding her captive, commandeering a gun as she unleashes a furor upon them all that turns blood and gun smoke into vivid flowers and animated birds. Ah, would that gunfire really could be turned into that.
Harley, just as it was in Suicide Squad, is perfectly capable of landing on her feet without any help—even if her “damaged goods” aura makes the men in her orbit who take pity on her “wayward” soul (the way Deadshot did when he refused to obey Amanda’s command to kill her) feel they need to create rescue operations for her. But as we can see, Harley has survived this long for a reason. Helped in part by acting utterly blasé toward abuse both physical and emotional.
But Harley isn’t the only character with a memorable backstory in this narrative. There’s also Cleo Cazo a.k.a. Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) and Abner Krill a.k.a. Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian)—the “Norman Bates” of the outfit. The animal members aspect of the squad remains intact, too. But whereas Suicide Squad favored Killer Croc to meet its “animal quota” among the squad, this edition offers two other non-human creatures: Weasel (Sean Gunn, better known as Kirk from Gilmore Girls) and Nanaue (Sylvester Stallone, playing up his meathead qualities to vocal perfection).
Another element of the movie that stays true to its counterpart is the collective desire to take Amanda Waller out for being so goddamn cunty. Managing to stop her aims fully is slightly unprecedented in this version, for even Enchantress couldn’t manage to do so in the 2016 iteration. But all it takes is one moralistic woman in the control room to wallop her so as to allow the Suicide Squad to linger in the Jötunheim area so they can combat Starro instead of letting him kill and destroy the town. Which is precisely what Amanda would have them do, for it is the U.S. way to decree, like Billie Eilish, “Not my responsibility” once they get what they want out of a country. After knocking her out, the woman explains she had to because, “All those people—little kids.” As in: like Harley, she drew the line at Waller harming children.
Harley then engages in the second-most memorable scene (after the gun smoke and blood as flower deluge one) of the movie when she finds herself floating in the interior effluvium of Starro as Ratcatcher 2’s literal sea of rats joins her inside the eye of the star to tear at its proverbial ventricles. As it dies out, it gets one of its extensions to muse, “I was happy floating, staring at the stars.”
Unfortunately, one thing that will never seem to die out is the U.S. government being something of the ultimate supervillain when it comes to “aiding” other countries. A euphemism for extracting what it wants out of said country before abandoning it in a more fucked up state than before. And, like Peacemaker, the U.S. genuinely believes its crusade-of-the-moment is for the “greater good” rather than owning up just a little bit more to its diabolical nature the way, say, Russia does. Filmed in part in Panama and Puerto Rico, these are just a couple of the countries that the U.S. has long viewed as its “playground” without considering the consequences for its largely experimental tampering in the lives of others. The most recent instance of this being, of course, Afghanistan. And so, even for those who feel this is just another superfluous “comic book movie,” there can be no denying that it is among the most overtly political in the canon to date, in turn, paving the way for the imminent Peacemaker series to come (which is set up at the end of the credits). One that will likely find Gunn continuing to explore the hypocrisies of American “heroism.”
