The Suicide Squad reviewed by Mark Kermode

[geektalk]

Mark Kermode reviews The Suicide Squad. A group of supervillains are forcefully recruited by a shady government organisation and sent off to a remote island to try to prevent the world-threatening ‘Project Starfish’.

kermodeandmayo

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yeah so the suicide squad not to be

confused with suicide squad to which

this is a

well inverted comma standalone sequel

meaning it kind of ignores

suicide squad which i think actually

you’d all rather have done um

part of the pc extended universe uh

so margot robbie is harley quinn

um big margaret robbie fans here

who alongside idris elba’s bloodsport

and john cena’s peacemaker are

part of a variously assembled group

because there’s a kind of start and then

it’s a false start and then there’s

another start

who are sent by viola davis’s tough

as nails uh kind of team leader

from the safety of the back room to go

and do battle with project starfish

um which is a project which is kind of

self-explanatory

your mission is to infiltrate jotunheim

and destroy every trace of project

starfish

how are we supposed to get in gaius

grieves the thinker

is a geneticist in charge of project

starfish

after hours he hangs out at a

gentleman’s club known as la catita

amable get greaves to help you by

whatever means necessary

and he can get you into yotenheim

any questions

what is that that is an overhead

projector

do you ever use it anymore no not really

so why don’t you just throw it away

peacemaker

starfish is a slang term for think

there’s any connection

no no no

way collection and yes

that is your hand and our way very good

so okay the thing that you get from that

is that the whole thing is

is very sarcastic in tone and very sort

of post-modern

and very what on earth is going on in

fact there is one moment

in it in which it actually pretty much

says on screen

what the actual f is going on um

like in a very sort of literal way it’s

written and directed by

james gunn uh who obviously is

was the guy around the guardians of the

galaxy movies and then was dropped from

guardians of the galaxy three

and now he’s been brought back into

i suppose to save suicide squad the

suicide squad definite article as

opposed to suicide squad no definite

article suicide squad you know everybody

thought was a load of old rubbish and

now

this is you know let’s kind of save it

and

what he does have i suppose is the

anarchic sensibility that

the suicide squad kind of requires

so i mean this is a film in which

sylvester

stallone providing the voice of a

talking shark isn’t

even close to being that the most what

on earth is going on moment on screen

it’s

you have polka dot man who’s a character

who shoots polka dots

who james gunn described as the dumbest

dc character of all time

who is sort of reinvented here in a kind

of tragic comic way

which is sort of trying to make sense of

polka dot man but also

you know also having that kind of rye

postmodern sarcastic

take on it and here’s the thing

it it’s um it is definitely true this is

a massive improvement on suicide squad

but then you know not going to the

movies would be a massive

improvement on suicide squad it’s also

true that what you have with this is a

kind of

very post-deadpool splurge of

sweary splatter i mean there’s quite a

lot of you know blood splattering and

you know limbs and stuff going on

which i kind of always enjoy um

and it is deliberately self-knowingly

stupid

in a kind of the best comparison i think

is it’s in a kind of howard the duck

sort of what

way that the the i mean i remember how

much tim polka and i

enjoyed however the dark not least

because we thought i can’t believe that

somebody spent so much money

making howard the duck and you sit there

watching the suicide squad thinking

i can’t quite believe that somebody has

thrown so many resources at the screen

to make what is

but utterly preposterous and stupid but

if you’re in on the joke then okay then

then that’s fine and there are things in

it that quite entertaining and things

that they’re quite funny there are also

things in it that aren’t the things in

it that a little bit like oh yeah really

okay

and my advice would be if you know if it

sounds like your cup of tea and if

you’re

a big james gunn fan um which i

understand because i’m i’ve been a fan

of some of his other stuff

then you see it on a very very big

screen because

it’s huge and the gag

is kind of it’s so stupid and so big

that big and stupid becomes the thing

and that’s why i say it kind of reminds

me of howard the duck

because the point about howard the duck

was it’s howard the duck

and yet there’s all these resources

behind it it’s this great big

multi-million dollar studio movie that

in the end is howard the duck

um i would say also incidentally the

original howard the duck

makes more sense than this does and

you know there’s some fun things there’s

peter capaldi with a bunch of

transistors stuck in his head

and there is a sort of heart and soul

somewhere in the middle of it but it

it is it is essentially a kind of

sarcastic postmodern ironic

action painting of splurge thrown on the

biggest screen possible

with its tongue firmly in its cheek but

in a kind of

okay how bonkers can we be how crazy can

we and my problem i suppose is

okay fine yes it wildly bonkers wildly

crazy

sylvester stallone is talking shock

isn’t the craziest thing on screen

but it’s not it’s not a huge amount more

than that

it’s just stuff on the screen some of

which is quite funny and some of which

is quite bloody and it’s got like i said

it’s got this sort of false start at the

beginning which is quite

you know quite knowing but it did feel

like a very big in

joke that’s my problem james gunn might

have been a writer on guardians of the

galaxy he also was one of the writers on

movie 43

so that’s just put that one out there

you

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