Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Viola Davis, Daniela Melchior, David Dastmalchian, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Rooker, Peter Capaldi, John Ostrander, Joel Kinnaman, Nathan Fillon, Jai Courtney, Flula Borg, Mayling Ng, Pete Davidson, Sean Gunn, Stephen Blackehart, Steve Agee, Tinashe Kajese, Jennifer Holland, Storm Reid, Natalia Safran, Jared Leland Gore, Rey Hernandez, Juan Diego Botto, Joaquin Cosio, Gerardo Davila, Mikaela Hoover, Lynne Ashe, Julio Cesar Ruiz, Taika Waititi.
Unlike the path of the hero on screen, you can have a lot of fun with a villain, with the rogue, and the antihero; unbound by convention, not wracked with guilt over their actions, they can influence a film’s audience which may make them feel uncomfortable in their appreciation but does have them cheering for the win when it appears.
Like the dichotomy between the heel and the babyface in wrestling, the good guy may win the bout on the majority of occasions, but you will admire the pedigree of the villain more, they often illustrate the torment of the watcher’s soul, the wondering if they too could get away with an act of the rascal or the scoundrel. After all a villain can commit one act of heroism and be remembered for the good, they have achieved, a hero can take a fall once, and they will be questioned on their character forever.
Such perhaps is the enjoyment behind films that employ the villain as the main draw, for example Jack Nicholson’s fantastic performance as The Joker in the 1989 Batman film, that you can get away with almost anything in the name of the pursuit of art, and it follows, the larger the group of antiheroes, the more the film will eat away at the idea of justice delivered by the lone avenger; instead it takes an even greater threat to humanity to destroy the notion of redemption being lived after the event.
The Suicide Squad is chaos incarnate, it is madness, the type of anarchy that personifies one of its lead characters, and it works magnificently. Think The Dirty Dozen when they receive orders for a second mission but change the easy on the eye scenario which makes sense in war and replace it with the rag tag misfits to whom commotion, pandemonium and disorder are the orders of the day, but to whom each one will find a way to unite in the name of destroying a common enemy and take delight in murdering a few people along the way.
The stable of the team holds the film together more eagerly than in the original offering, and allows the chaos to be seen as more amusing, less dark, more in keeping with the New 52 frames of reference to which Harley Quinn has taken great advantage of in the graphic novels by D.C. The seamless sequences, the direction, the colourful expression of film, and not least the storyline, all add up to the pursuit of perfectly choregraphed bedlam, and as film unfolds the madder, the more incredible it becomes.
With superb performances by Margot Robbie as the aforementioned Harley Quinn, Idris Elba as Bloodsport, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, and Joel Kinnaman as Colonel Rick Flag, The Suicide Squad is entertainment to the max, a lesson in an age of nihilism, a picture of colourful, inspired hero-worship.
Ian D. Hall