The Suicide Squad, explosive fun

The Suicide Squad has been reviewed everywhere as a brilliant, bloody, action extravaganza. It was the “bloody” part that made me almost not watch it. It was the Margot Robbie part that made me watch it. I actually loved it and I love that you can see it on HBO Max without any extra charge beyond your subscription. There are a few spoilers ahead.

The Suicide Squad was, in fact, a brilliant, bloody, action extravaganza. But it was comic book blood pictured in comic ways and not the visceral kind of gruesome. It was funny. Really funny. And Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) wasn’t the only great character.

There was Viola Davis (Viola Davis!!) as Amanda Waller, who ran a prison and dispatched various inmates on suicide missions for the US government. There were some fun lesser known DC characters such as Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior). Daniela Melchior was fantastic and almost stole the show from Harley Quinn, if you can imagine that.

Prison is where Peacemaker (John Cena) and Bloodsport (Idris Elba) were found. I think you’ll be delighted by how funny and excellent John Cena and Idris Elba are in this, too.

These characters and several others were sent to the remote island of Corto Maltese to kill the alien starfish supervillain Starro. It took a lot to kill him, and some of the heroes died along the way. The US government wanted all evidence of their participation in the experiments destroyed along with Starro. A bone of contention, that.

Not to slight the many other interesting characters, let me name names. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) was the leader of the teams sent to Corto Maltese. Some of the lesser known DC characters included Savant (Michael Rooker), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), T.D.K. (Nathan Fillion), Javelin (Flula Borg), Weasel (Sean Gunn). I also want to give a shout out to Storm Reid, as Bloodsport’s daughter. She’s the reason he agreed to participate in this crazy mission.

The crazy scientist on the island responsible for the catastrophic growth of Starro was Thinker (Peter Capaldi). Starro was big as King Kong and capable of taking over the bodies of everyone nearby with smaller versions of himself.

In the end, it was Harley Quinn, The Polka-Dot Man, and Ratcatcher 2 who finally pulled the plug on Starro. Yep, they downed him with a javalin, a bunch of polka dots, and a hoard of rats. Isn’t that just the best?

This action flick was directed and written by James Gunn. I don’t try to watch every superhero comic-based action movie, but I’m sure glad I watched this one.

Here’s the trailer.

Oh, yeah. Stick around to the end because maybe everyone you thought was dead isn’t really dead.