Review of the IMAX film 'The Suicide Squad' (2021)

The DC Extended Universe (DCEU) is the franchise adapting the DC Comics to the silver screen. DC Comics places its stories in a single fictional universe, and takes advantage of it to intertwine its stories – and now it’s the turn for the films. The Suicide Squad is the 10^th DCEU film and the 2^nd Suicide Squad film.

The Suicide Squad is the new form of an old idea that goes back to the film from 1967 The Dirty Dozen: to have a team of convicted criminals perform a high-risk mission in exchange for clemency. In the DCEU, this team is called Task Force X and is composed of humans and meta-humans alike, some of which have superpowers. Its members are implanted with remotely-controlled bombs in their necks. Intelligence officer Amanda Waller is in charge of the team and won’t hesitate to use the bombs to kill any members that disobey or flee. On location, the team is led by colonel Rick Flag.

The story created by James Gunn is an action comedy, much in the style of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. But it could be called a black comedy as well - there is a long list of characters, but it gets shorter and shorter as the action progresses, with many characters finding death in ridiculous ways or by mistake. The story takes place at the fictitious south-American Corto Maltese island-state, a former ally of USA that has just undergone a coup d’etat, and where the secret laboratory of Jötunheim is said to contain a threat that endangers the world. Gunn’s dialogues, as usual, are ingenious and funny. And speaking of dialogues, it is worth noticing a first in north-American culture: having a daughter delivering a ‘fuck you’ to her father for having abandoned her and her mother, and then rather than experiencing culpability, having the father delivering the ‘fuck you’ back because of not having been consulted about having children.

James Gunn directs in his usual light-hearted style, mixing action with dialogues, and avoiding being dramatic even when some protagonists happen to die. If anything, he steps up a notch in the number and gruesomeness of deaths. Action sequences are fun and also visually spectacular, thanks to the visual effects – but they are neither exciting nor thrilling, for even though some protagonists die, there are others that never feel to be in danger. In particular, Gunn makes an art of choreographing massacre sequences. In Gunn’s hands, the sequence where a protagonist is surrounded by enemies and fights them to death becomes an arty video-clip, which leads the spectator to enjoy the scenography and the camera movements, but also to wonder how much psychopathic he or she has to be to enjoy the many deaths. After all, the Western World hasn’t experienced war since 1945, so by now we should be already used to take on conflicts through dialogue and voting. Is the audience of a big budget film really supposed to enjoy the message that given enough deadly skills or weapons the few can outweigh the many, or is it just a video-gamesque way to blow off the frustrations caused by living in society? I am leaving the matter here for sociologists to study.

The soundtrack, much as the the ones Guardians of the Galaxy films, is composed by a adequate selection of songs from all time.

As for the acting, brilliant performance from Margot Robbie and Juan Diego Botto. Good performance from Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Steve Agee, Alice Braga, David Dastamalchian, and Sylvester Stallone’s voicing of King Shark. Okay performance from John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Peter Capaldi and Joaquín Cosío. Weak performance from Daniela Melchior.

As for the IMAX format: The credits show that the film is 'Filmed with IMAX cameras', and the image certainly shows high quality, but the film scenarios don’t profit much from it.

All in all, an excellent action comedy, with brilliant dialogues. 4 out of 5.

Title:	The Suicide Squad
Genre:	Action comedy
Year:	2021
Nationality:	Unites States, Canada, United Kingdom
Colour:	Colour
Director:	James Gunn
Writer:	James Gunn
Cast:	Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Peter Capaldi, John Ostrander, Nathan Fillion, Flula Borg, Mayling Ng, Pete Davidson, Sean Gunn, Stephen Blackehart, Steve Agee, Tinashe Kajese, Jennifer Holland, Fernando Martinez
Producer:	Charles Roven, Peter Safran
Co-producer:	Simon Hatt, Lars P. Winther
Executive producer:	Zack Snyder, Deborah Snyder, Walter Hamada, Chantal Nong Vo, Nikolas Korda, Richard Suckle
Production designer:	Beth Mickle
Cinematographer:	Henry Braham
Film editor:	Fred Raskinm, Christian Wagner
Casting:	Yiniva Cardenas, John Papsidera
Art Director:	Alan Hook
Set Decorator:	Lisa K. Sessions
Costume Designer:	Judianna Makovsky
Music:	John Murphy
Running time:	132 minutes
Language:	English, Spanish