Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Suicide Squad’ on HBO Max, in Which James Gunn Renders a Flaccid Franchise a Deranged Delight

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad — once again ripe for the plucking on HBO Max, after first premiering during August of 2021 — is gonna make you forget all about David Ayer’s thoroughly, deservedly eviscerated 2016 Suicide Squad. That’s the hope, at least. We’re going to step over Ayer’s recent revelation that a more visionary director’s cut of the film exists (a very Zack Snyderesque move) and briefly acknowledge how Gunn was famously fired by Disney from Guardians of the Galaxy 3, defected to DC to defibrillate the Suicide Squad concept, then was rehired by Disney. But let’s focus on what’s flickering in front of our faces now, and that’s a wholesale batshit very R-rated Gunn Squad that brings back Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn (last seen in Birds of Prey), introduces a bunch of new weirdo antiheroes and sure seems like a slam dunk.

THE SUICIDE SQUAD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Prison: A villain known as Tangent (Michael Rooker) is persuaded by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who we surely recognize as the Squad assembler from the first movie, to join a new Squad for a crazy black-ops mission. Succeed, and he gets 10 years knocked off his sentence. Sounds peachy. It’s the kind of deal she offers all kinds of incarcerated villains, many of whom end up croaked, and not like a frog. So Tangent and a bunch of other rejectoids, who, besides Harley Quinn, I won’t name or reveal because ruining the reveals would be no fun, are gonna storm a beach and battle an army and etc. etc., plot plot plot. It goes poorly, since a pretty famous actor making a cameo gets his face blown right off. Shit goes to hell, and then begins the funniest opening-credits sequence I’ve seen in a while — probably since Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2 — followed by a subtitle, 3 DAYS EARLIER. We’re about to meet the real stars of the movie, not those other dorks, besides Harley Quinn. She’s practically the headliner here. She’s a killer, not a killee, remember.

No, there was a second team of losers storming another side of the island that night, and we see Waller putting ’em together and debriefing them and here they are: Bloodsport (Idris Elba), a kind of Inspector Gadget of lethal weaponry, tagged to be leader. Peacemaker (John Cena), a megapatriot musclewad who’s also good with weapons, and coldly kills all kinds of people in the name of America and liberty and freedom. Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior), a small young woman who can control rats and has a cute pet rat with a backpack. King Shark (voice of Sylvester Stallone), a great white/human hybrid lump of toothy, hungry, monosyllabic flesh. And finally, my favorite, Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), a softspoken fella who can shoot explosive polka dots from his gauntlets; it’s a long story.

This group doesn’t really get along but they’ll have to learn if they’re going to figure out a way to blow up a giant starfish eyeball monster — from space! — that a foreign dictatorship plans to use as a weapon to take over America. How, exactly, does one use a giant starfish eyeball monster — from space! — to take over America? Well, the giant starfish eyeball monster — from space! — can spawn smaller starfish eyeball monsters — from space! — that… well, nevermind. It’s really not important, because the movie isn’t wholly about taking out a giant starfish eyeball monster — from space! — before it’s used for nefarious purposes, but rather, how this cadre of geeks and malcontents can overcome their deeply ingrained psychological peccadilloes and learn to work together to achieve their goals. It won’t be easy, because these psychos tend to say things like, “I NO FRIENDS” and “I don’t like to kill people, but if I pretend they’re my mom, it’s easy.” Good luck getting it together, f—-ers.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Is this where we compare The Suicide Squad with the non-definite-article-having Suicide Squad, as well as every other flippant, gratuitously violent, R-rated, groteque comic book movie, like Deadpool, Deadpool 2, The Punisher and Birds of Prey? Yeah. And maybe I’m freshly high on Gunn’s noxious fumes, but The Suicide Squad is better than all of them (although the jury’s still out as to whether it’s gonna age as well as the Guardians of the Galaxys).

Performance Worth Watching: Elba has something of an arc, and Dastmalchian and Melchior bring oddball textures to the film, and Cena finally hits paydirt after a bunch of junk movie roles (although I’ll absolutely give him Trainwreck). But you wanna say Robbie is the standout, because Harley Quinn is so damn interesting, the murderous hot mess with a heart, and lots of stuff coursing behind her crazed smile. Even though this is her third movie, there’s still a lot of cards to play in her stacked deck.

Memorable Dialogue: A key thematic exchange, after the squad learns about its mission:

Bloodsport: We’re all gonna die.

Polka-Dot Man: I hope so.

Bloodsport: Oh, for f—-’s sake.

Sex and Skin: A far-away shot of a man’s thingamajang as he gets gunned down, pantsless, in cold blood.

Our Take: Death is a joke except when it’s not in The Suicide Squad — and Gunn pulls off that tricky maneuver, making us not give a crap but then also give a crap. He shrewdly worms his way into the minds of his characters, and even gives a wad of CGI like King Shark enough of an inner life so we’d like to see him survive the big third-act kerflooey, and celebrate when he tears a person in half in an eruption of gore. We laugh at the comically precise ruthlessness of Bloodsport and Peacemaker slaughtering a cadre of soldiers, then laugh again when they learn the soldiers were actually on their side. How is this movie funny where sewage like The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, which is also brashly violent, doesn’t? Because Gunn casts enough of a murky shadow with his tongue-in-cheek material to remind us that killing is bad and death is tragic and celebrating either is ugly, instead of treating this stuff like cynical punchlines.

From a narrative standpoint, Gunn isn’t always interested in hustling to the next kerfuffle. He integrates pauses and asides into the mayhem, allowing him to flesh out characters and define motives, e.g., a lengthy sequence where Harley Quinn allows herself to be swept off her feet by a princely fellow, the punchline for which is funny, sad, revealing and outright nuts. This doesn’t make for the smoothest storytelling flow, but the film doesn’t suffer much for it. Even castoff wackjobs like Polka-Dot Man — a legit DC character from the Batman canon, I might add — are human, too.

Gunn’s indulgences bring the film to life: A couple of daffy time jumps, a tasty and evocative soundtrack, some iconic photography of his protagonists strutting into battle and heaps of visual rambunctiousness, especially once the giant starfish eyeball monster — from space! — erupts from captivity. It’s busy, but stops just this side of ungainly, and sustains itself nicely for 132 minutes. In this sense, it’s a lot like the Guardians films, but the R-ratedness allows for further tonal exploration. I praise The Suicide Squad with a sophisticated term or two becuase Gunn is a technically proficient filmmaker who finds the heart within the extravaganza, but this film shows his Troma roots like Guardians never did. With Suicide he indulges some gleefully demented, sicko shit. But he also makes us give a shit. Not just anybody can do that.

Our Call: The Suicide Squad is deranged where the first film was sloppy and tentative. Gunn fully commits to the concept, and the result is gross, funny, ridiculous entertainment. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Suicide Squad on HBO Max