A Change of Pace For Super Hero Movies

Rating: 8/10 (23 August 2016)

As the follow-up to "Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice," "Fury" director David Ayer's DC Comics extravaganza "The Suicide Squad" qualifies as a gritty, slam-bang, straight-faced, but formulaic action thriller. Although far from realistic in an any conventional sense, Ayer's ensemble epic casts a dark shadow over everything that it depicts and its unsavory psychotic felons tangle with powerful mystical entities from an ancient era. Specifically, the chief villain is almost seven thousand years old and relies on magical incantations. Clearly, the ostensible difference between DC Comics movies and Disney's Marvel movies is night and day, with DC preferring the dark, while Marvel basks in the daylight. Unlike The House of Mouse's Marvel costume-clad, crime fighters, "Squad" doesn't sugarcoat either its costume-clad convicts or its sinister shenanigans. Interestingly enough, Twentieth Century Fox's three Marvel franchises ("X-Men," "Fantastic Four," and "Deadpool") land somewhere between DC and Disney. Whereas the "Captain America: Civil War" characters survived miraculously to fight another day, some "Suicide Squad" characters die. Most of the characters in "Suicide Squad" are as repugnant as they are unrepentant, and I don't mean just the heinous criminals that the Government has recruited for Task Force X to perform their unscrupulous chores. The trigger-happy dame who assembles these dastards is pretty despicable herself. Unless you're a literate DC Comics bibliophile, you may not be familiar with the Suicide Squad but they bear some resemblance to Marvel Comics' Avengers but altogether lack their charisma. Historically, the first "Suicide Squad" bore little resemblance to the cinematic "Suicide Squad." Captain Rick Flag and his girlfriend Karin Grace, Dr. Hugh Evans, and Jess Bright battled monsters back in 1959 in DC Comics' "The Brave and The Bold." They were all humans and flew jet-bombers. In 1987, DC Comics' Legends Crossover graphic series introduced the new "Suicide Squad" that consisted of an assemblage of super-convicts, such as Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and Enchantress, similar to those in Ayer's film.
As "Suicide Squad" unfolds, Superman is still dead and gone. Street vendors sell 'Remember' T-shirts commemorating the last son of Krypton. Although Clark Kent's alter-ego doesn't show up for this clash of the titans, anybody with half-a-brain should know that Superman will eventually make an encore appearance. Indeed, Warner Brothers and DC Comics have plans in the pipeline for a "Man of Steel" sequel. Nevertheless, Superman is nowhere to be seen here, and an unscrupulous, top-level government official, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis of "The Help"), fears that the next extraterrestrials may not be as benevolent as the Man of Steel. Consequently, she is mobilizing a gang of costume-clad, super-convicts that she classifies as "the worst of the worst." When she presents Task Force X, the National Security Council initially wants nothing to do with it. The Pentagon thinks that Waller's idea is foolhardy. In short order, Waller changes their minds. She dispatches one of her motley crew, the witch-goddess Enchantress, aka June Moon (Cara Delevingne of "Paper Towns"), and Enchantress swipes a top-secret document from Iran that the Pentagon has been desperately trying to seize without success. An ex-Arkham Asylum psychiatrist Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie of "Focus"); a cream of the crop assassin Deadshot (Will Smith of "Concussion"); a guilt-stricken pyromaniac El Diablo (Jay Hernandez of "Hostel"); a sociopathic Australian bank robber Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney of "Terminator Genysis"); a mutant half-man, half-crocodile cannibal Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje of "Pompeii"); and a specialized assassin Slipknot (Adam Beach of "Cowboys & Aliens") constitute Waller's group. Rounding out this diversified outfit of unsavory savages is an implacable female ninja, Katana (Karen Fukuhara), armed with a bizarre samurai sword which traps the souls of all who die by its blade. Actually, she serves to protect the group's commander, Special Forces Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman of "Robocop"), who has a genius for strategic planning. Oddly enough, Flag is involved romantically with June Moon, an archaeologist who blundered into the wrong cave and encountered the spirit of the Enchantress. Unlike the other members of the Suicide Squad who bide their time in a miserable Louisiana dungeon, June and the creepy Enchantress share the same body. Think of the split-personality of the Enchantress and June Moon as a variation on Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Whenever Waller requires June to summon the Enchantress, this untrustworthy 7,000-year old sorceress takes over June's body. Meantime, an elite team of Seals, led by Captain G.Q. Edwards (Scott Eastwood of "Fury"), are around to mop up what the Suicide Squad doesn't wipe out.
"The Suicide Squad'' differs from "Batman Vs Superman." Although Batman appears momentarily in two scenes while Bruce Wayne puts in a cameo appearance, the costume-clad convicts dominate matters in "The Suicide Squad." They carry or conceal standard-issue weapons, and their outfits aren't as colorful as either Batman or Superman. El Diablo comes the closest to being a superhero because he can transform himself into an incendiary human torch on impulse. Enchantress makes a strong adversary because she can conjure up things out of thin air. At one point, she summons the spirit of her long-lost brother to help her subjugate mankind. Second, "The Suicide Squad" resembles a zombie combat movie. Our anti-heroic team marches through the apocalyptic wreckage of Midway City as if they were soldiers entering a recently bombed city. The Witch-Goddess Enchantress possesses the power to turn Flag's own men against him. She kills Flag's soldiers and reconstitutes them as her hooligans. In this sense, Enchantress' army behaves like the zombies from "The Walking Dead," and they whittle down our heroes. If a witch-goddess with an army of zombies weren't enough with which to contend, our heroes clash with the Joker (Jared Leto of "The Dallas Buyers Club") who pops up as a largely peripheral villain to rescue his sweetheart Harley Quinn.
Clocking in at two hours and three minutes, "The Suicide Squad" doesn't provide enough detail about some characters, but director David Ayes doesn't squander a second as he parades the convicts to the brink of extinction.