The Suicide Squad - No Homework Required

Comic book movies and TV shows are very complicated these days. There are multiple universes, reboots, remakes, director’s cuts, and TV shows. It’s hard to keep up with everything, much less follow along. Because of this, a film like The Suicide Squad should be one movie too many due it being a sequel/soft reboot filled with obscure characters that even the dorkiest audience member would have trouble recognizing. Instead, it ends up being the most singularly focused and entertaining comic book movie in years.

The first Suicide Squad was a bit of a mess. It was meant to be an R-rated, subversive response to the Marvel movies, but studio interference turned it into a forgettable PG-13 cog in the machine. When the DC universe failed to equal the popularity, and focus, of the Marvel movies, it appeared that the film would be a one-off. But when Marvel fired writer/director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), DC immediately hired him and told him he could make whatever he wanted; it turned out he wanted to give the Suicide Squad another chance. 

(NOTE: I won’t be writing any major spoilers in this review, but even being vague about certain things may spoil them, as this movie contains a few big surprises.) 

The Suicide Squad is kind of a sequel in that four characters (Amanda Waller, Rick Flag, Captain Boomerang, and Harley Quinn) return, but it’s also a bit of a reboot in that the focus is largeley on new members of the squad, like Idris Elba’s Bloodsport, Daniela Melchior’s Ratcatcher 2, and John Cena’s Peacemaker. Other members and events of the 2016 Squad are not referenced, which is kind of nice because that movie is so forgettable anyway (and I didn’t want to watch it again to prep for this movie).

Because the first film is largely ignored, The Suicide Squad is able to be refreshingly simple, and the tone is changed. The first film was slightly comedic, but overall it was a joyless affair. The Suicide Squad, on the other hand, is pretty much an action comedy. Some of the funniest moments occur between Bloodsport and Peacemaker as they develop a bit of a Gimli and Legolas rivalry during the mission. But the bulk of the humor is due to the self-aware nature of the film. This is a film that features a humanoid weasel and a talking shark (hilariously voiced by Sylvester Stallone); rather than try to come up with some reason for characters like this to exist, the film just makes fun of how ridiculous comic book characters can be. 

Speaking of ridiculous, there’s no need to get into the plot of this film. There’s a truly weird big villain at the end, and it needs to be taken care of. What more does anyone need to know? The story moves at such a fast and carefree pace that you don’t really care about how crazy the characters are or if all of the plot makes perfect sense because it’s simply a fun time. 

Most of the credit is due to James Gunn’s writing and direction (the action is brutal and easy to follow), but the perfect casting all around is key, as well. Idris Elba makes for a great anti-hero because he’s naturally charismatic enough to not be hated for being a jerk. Margot Robbie is now the official face of Harley Quinn and for good reason. Joel Kinnaman gets to have a lot more fun as Rick Flag this time around. Daniela Melchior provides a surprising and much-needed bit of heart to the film. Viola Davis is even more bureaucratically menacing this time around. And John Cena is the revelation of the film. His sincere delivery of silly dialogue is consistently hilarious. 

The cast in general seemed to be enjoying themselves, and that translates to the film. The Squad, flawed and annoying and crazy as some of them may be, is fun to be around. Scenes of them just hanging out are just as entertaining, if not more, than the action set pieces.

Perhaps this new Squad only seems great in comparison to the old one, or perhaps it’s easy to love a comic book movie that doesn’t require research to make sense. Or maybe it’s simply a great James Gunn film. One thing is for sure, The Suicide Squad is one of the only comic book movies in recent memory that I wanted to watch more than once, and not just because it’s a standalone story, separate from any complex “universe.” The Suicide Squad is rewatchable because behind all the gore and dark humor, there are interesting characters. And good characters can always carry a movie, no matter how silly it gets.

Random Thoughts/Favorite Quotes

James Gunn is known for his excellent music choices and the streak continues with this movie. Love the use of “Folsom Prison Blues” to start things off.

Michael Rooker should have to wear that wig in all future roles.

I love how Joel Kinnaman says “Weasel.”

Always cool to see Pibb represented.

“All names are letters, dickhead.”

For the record an Afghan Hound looks nothing like Weasel.

“He’s harmless. I mean he’s not harmless; he’s killed twenty-seven children. But...you know...we got him to...I think...he’s agreed to do this.”

I’m kind of indifferent towards Pete Davidson, but you know Gunn made a lot of people happy by having him get shot in the face less than ten minutes in.

Normally, I’m all for Jai Courtney getting killed off as immediately as possible, but I sincerely enjoy him as Captain Boomerang. He was one of my favorite parts of the first film. I think of him like Gerard Butler: just let the guy speak in his native accent in every role.

The reveal that all the soldiers the Squad kills are actually allies is my favorite twist of the film, but the beginning fake out of the first Squad being a diversion is a close second.

“Who the fuck is Bloodsport?” I love that I have no idea who most of these characters are, and it doesn’t matter. If watching Marvel feels like you have to do enough research to complete a dissertation at this point, then watching The Suicide Squad is the equivalent of forgetting that you had a test on a subject you already know nothing about, so you say “fuck it” and guess on every question. 

“Book read.”

King Shark is “reading” The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

Sylvester Stallone doesn’t know he’s in this movie. The filmmakers secretly recorded all his dialogue by just following him around...like in Bowfinger.

Seriously, though, Stallone’s voice acting is hilarious throughout.

“Who knows why mad men do what they do?”

“I can’t believe this thing had a bullet.”

If there’s one lesson to be learned here, it’s “don’t kill birds.”

But seriously, with the birds and the rats, there’s a real message about innocent, natural creatures and the repercussions for those that do them harm.

“Fake mustache.”

I really dig Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2. Her sincere line delivery and nearly comatose energy make her this weird heart of the film.

It kind of sucks that Gunn is going back to Marvel after this. He seems like he should have been with DC the whole time, just doing whatever the fuck he wanted. Oh well, at least we have this movie.

What makes this movie amazing is that halfway through all this crazy shit, there’s a quiet bus ride of character development.

I shouldn’t care about any of these obscure-ass characters, especially since they’re technically supposed to be villains, but I ended up caring more about them than I did in any of the bigger movies of either DC or Marvel. For instance, the party scene in the club is great. It’s funny and endearing (and sad when it cuts to King Shark by himself on the bus), and if they attempted a similar scene with the Justice League or the Avengers it just wouldn’t work. (Aside from the shawarma scene, I can’t think of another scene with either group just hanging out and enjoying themselves for a bit, but I could be wrong.)

I love that a dude named Bloodsport talks about the “Death Touch.” If only Van Damme was playing the guard he said it to…

I don’t want 3-D to make a comeback or anything, but I bet that Harley Quinn flower sequence would look awesome in 3-D.

“All right, who ate all the fucking empanadas?” 

“I am walking back and forth!”

Always good to hear the Pixies in a movie.

Much like Harley Quinn, I forgot about Milton the first time I watched the movie. But upon a second watch, his background involvement is amusing. Here’s this regular-ass dude running along with all these fucking weirdos.

The Thinker’s fucked up lab is right out of Dr. Logan’s in Day of the Dead.

I get the need to kill off nearly everyone from the first film (sort of rebooting the series while also creating real stakes), but it still sucked to see Flag die.

“New dumb friends!”

“Oh, fizzlesticks. Hold on.”

“What was Milton going to do?”

“Get on a satellite, Dale, you fucking dickhead!”

“If they have purpose, then so do we all.”

What a beautiful and disgusting way to kill the monster.

“I was happy, floating, staring at the stars.”

..

"Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" - Tarantino's Hilarious Nostalgic Fairy Tale

This post is more like a general review. I don’t technically own this film yet, but I definitely will. When that happens, I like to write my initial thoughts as a review and re-visit the film after I’ve bought it to give it my usual treatment. The biggest difference is that I won’t have a Random Thoughts section since I wasn’t able to write those down as I watched (which is what I do for regular posts on this site). I will still be writing this review with SPOILERS, however, because I don’t feel like tip-toeing around the points I want to make about the film. 

Quentin Tarantino’s work has always been tied to other films, so it makes sense that he would finally make a film overtly about Hollywood. Specifically, he made a film about the Hollywood he loved and wished had never changed. As usual, he masterfully recreated an era and the films and TV shows from said era in such a way that the film is enjoyable on the surface alone. 

I wasn’t alive during the time period represented in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, so I have no feelings of nostalgia for most of the things presented here. But Tarantino’s obsessive love for the time period comes across so strongly that I ended up wishing I had experienced it. By the end of the film, I was just like Tarantino: I wanted this world to keep going and never change.

Which brings me to the “twist” ending that some people have had issues with (I’ve avoided most press about the film because I like to keep my thoughts untainted, but I have seen article titles about the ending, and I’ve seen a few theories that want to explain away the ending as Cliff’s acid hallucination [which I completely disagree with]). By having Cliff and Rick (and Brandy!) take out the would-be murderers, Tarantino did two things. First, after building up to the murder we all knew was coming, he found a way to surprise us by literally changing history. Second, and more importantly in my opinion, he made this film the fairy tale its title suggested it was in the first place. 

The focus on Sharon Tate throughout the film wasn’t meant to create foreboding for her eventual murder that we all knew was coming. It was meant to show the pure joy Tate had as a successful actress in Hollywood. This is what Rick was wanting the entire film. He wanted to get through that gate to become connected to Tate so his career could become what he always wanted it to be. 

Taking out the Manson cult members at the end was a bit of gleeful wish fulfillment, much like Tarantino did in Inglourious Basterds by killing Hitler. In both films, I found myself laughing and enjoying myself more than any other time I can remember at the movies. It’s easy to cheer for the grisly demise of such people, and I love how Tarantino uses grotesque violence for humor rather than simple shock and disgust. 

While both endings represent wish fulfillment for historical events, Hollywood is deeper than that because Tarantino has such affection for the time period in Hollywood that was brought to an end (in large part because of the Manson murders). With Basterds, I think killing Hitler was more about being able to give the team a win at the end. That’s fine, but I think Hollywood’s ending is more satisfying thematically. 

The ending is only successful because Tarantino spent so much time setting up the world before that moment. He recreated a Hollywood I want to hang out in, and, most importantly, he created characters I want to hang out with. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are so great together that I wish the scene of them hanging out watching TV together went on twice as long. They come across as genuine friends. My only complaint about the film is that they spend too much time apart during it. But each character’s journey is entertaining enough that you don’t notice it that much. 

DiCaprio has found in Tarantino another director that brings out the best in him. DiCaprio has a lot to do here, and he nails it. There’s the stuttering insecure Rick, there’s the actor Rick who has to put on a public face of confidence, and there are all of the characters he portrays. The most notable character was the heavy in an episode of Lancer, which is one my favorite sequences in the film. The filmmaking alone in that sequence is great as Tarantino effortlessly switches back and forth between the actual show and the mistakes Rick makes that stop the scene. He draws you into the scene so much that you start to forget that you’re not watching an actual western. But it’s DiCaprio’s performance both as a successful actor and as an insecure actor that make it special. The two show-stopping moments for me are Rick’s trailer freak out and his nailing of the kidnapping scene. 

Pitt plays a simpler character but that doesn’t mean his scenes or performance are lacking. Cliff the more tragic of the two, and it’s arguable that the ending saves his way of life more than Rick’s. Pitt portrays Cliff as fearless and carefree, but there’s a hint of melancholy to the performance that makes it one of Pitt’s most subtle and enjoyable performances of his career. 

There are an embarrassing amount of amazingly cast side characters that I’ll wait to write about when I can re-visit the film at home. But I did want to comment on Margot Robbie’s performance as Sharon Tate. Her lack of lines is a criticism that Tarantino has faced, and I can see the argument. Her character is probably too silent, but I believe it’s because Tarantino was using her as the embodiment of what Rick wanted, both as a career and in life. Obviously he wanted to get close to Polanski to possibly work with him and elevate his career. But more importantly he wanted to be like Tate when she watches herself in the theater. He wanted to entertain people and be loved. And it’s a credit to both Tarantino’s script and Robbie’s performance that she didn’t need many lines to convey this. When Tarantino could be bothered to take the camera off of her feet, you could see all the hope and happiness to make this point in Robbie’s face. I can understand why people think her lack of lines and screentime is problematic, but I also don’t think the movie is about her at all. She simply represents a Hollywood that both Tarantino and Rick want, and you don’t necessarily need a lot of lines to get that point across.

The performances and amazing moments (like the also controversial Bruce Lee scene) are enough to make this movie one of my favorites of the year, but it’s the foreboding feeling throughout the film that cements it as my number one film (there are a lot of movies still to come out, of course, but I feel confident that this movie will stay in my top three at least). The foreboding feeling is mainly the Manson murders that the audience is thinking of every time we see Tate on screen. But the foreboding isn’t just about the terrible murders that were going to happen in reality; it was also about the end of an era. The film I’m most reminded of in this regard is Inherent Vice (so much so that I immediately re-watched it and will write about it next). That divisive film is one of my favorites from Paul Thomas Anderson because the whole film is about the end of the carefree ‘60s and the beginning of the paranoia of the ‘70s that still persists to this day. It was when we stopped living in the moment and started living in fear (“we” culturally speaking since I didn’t actually experience this cultural shift). The movie is largely a comedy but with this feeling of dread throughout that I found fascinating. This is why I love Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. It’s one of the funniest movies in recent memory, but it also says something about what happened to our culture in this time period without ever actually having to say anything.

Because of Tarantino’s set up for the first two-plus hours, when we finally reach the boiling point and the violent climax occurs, the true point of the movie is clear: Tarantino, a man who has built his career paying homage to the films and TV shows he loves, longs for this time period and wants it to last forever. And as a filmmaker, he can change history in the form of this fairy tale, and imagine what could have been. 

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