You always remember very well those feature films with which you had a great time in a movie theater. They don’t necessarily have to be movies, great works of art made by brilliant directors like Martin Scorsese, for example. It is enough that they manage to catch you in your story, that they provoke intense feelings in you and that, of course, they do not treat you as if you were a fool. With an audiovisual device and a decent script, of course. To the rare continuation that is Suicide squad (James Gunn, 2021) we can put it in this satisfying sack.
Like all the movies of the irregular DC Extended Universe —Or even the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its greater cohesion—, it is not high-flying by any means. And not because it doesn’t have Clark Kent (Henry Cavill).
But let the American be James Gunn at the controls seems, in recent times, a guarantee of cheeky fun and glorious sequences; or, at the very least, something very similar to them. It premiered with the unpleasant Slither (2006) and was able to enter the superhero narrative thanks to the failed Super (2010).
However, he did not raise his head until he was given the juicy opportunity to deliver us the first two volumes on the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014, 2017); about which he is also preparing a Christmas special (2022) and the film that completes the trilogy (2023). And there is no doubt that when the spectators sit down to watch Suicide squad, they will recognize the style of popera intensity that he has given us with Groot (Vin Diesel) and company.
In love with Harley Quinn
Because James Gunn, also author of the libretto, also offers us here a hilarious and brutal action rampage who, by his own dramatic concept, refuses to take prisoners. His compatriot David Ayer only achieved one admissible length (2016) in which we could fall in love with the grid. Harley quinn (Margot Robbie) to the point that she was later allowed the role of Birds of prey (Cathy Yan, 2020).
And even though we find her funnier in the other two movies, it supposes a real pleasure to alternate with her again on the big screen during Suicide squad. The famous actress who plays her (The wolf of Wall Street) has been made to paper by pure repetition, although already in the previous feature it was full. And of the other actors accompanying it there is no complaint whatsoever.
Idris Elba (The Wire) is a good Robert DuBois, rough but more sentimental than Will Smith’s Floyd Lawton; and both John Cena (Bumblebee), again Joel Kinnaman (House of Cards), Daniela Melchior (The black notebook) and David Dastmalchian (The dark knight) as Christopher Smith, Rick Flag, the Ratcatcher and Abner Krill as Peter Capaldi (Doctor who), Alice Braga (City of God), Juan Diego Botto (Silence broken) and Joaquín Cosío (Quantum of Solace) playing Cliff Carmichael, Sol Soria, Silvio Luna and Mateo Suárez they play their roles perfectly.
As for the Oscar-winning Viola Davis (Solaris), it is a pleasure that I return to the relentless Amanda Waller. And they are not lacking in Suicide squad James Gunn regulars as Nathan Fillion (Saving Private Ryan), Michael Rooker (JFK), Taika Waititi (What we do in the shadows) or his brother, Sean Gunn (Gilmore girls), with brief interventions.
The antiheroic madness of Suicide squad in the style of James Gunn
The cast must have had a great time on the set of this antiheroic madness, which gives us the wacky conversations and the dark counterpoint humor that we know James Gunn for Guardians of the Galaxy, but without gimmicks for all audiences, the fight choreographies and other sequences of spectacular action, always as bloody as it could not be in Marvel Studios, but with a destruction to the Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Joe and Anthony Russo, 2014) or Black widow (Cate Shortland, 2021) and, on the other hand, similar to that of the Monsterverse.
Without forgetting his famous love for assembling energetic scenes that become overwhelming due to the enthusiasm of his musicalization with contrasting songs. Y what laughter sometimes in Suicide squad, friends.