James Gunn’s ‘The Suicide Squad’: Is it worth it?

The Suicide Squad (opening August 6) is a film of absolute truths. It’s an adverbial movie to begin with : wildly funny, utterly over the top, unmistakably wild, and of course it can only work in the hands of James Gunn. It’s also a great juggling exercise that cleverly combines comedy, action and horror. Because there is terror, but indie terror, despite the budget. (No, it is not a movie to watch with your young children: there are dismemberments, faces that burst, heads that explode).

It’s funny because this film is closer (and it’s far, but very far… except for the love of viscera) from The Toxic Avenger (which if you haven’t seen, you have it right now on Filmin) than fromThe Twelve of the Gallows , although the comparison is inevitable, which has more to do with the origins of the comic than with the inspiration of James Gunn. And as far as the superhero genre is concerned, he’s very, very close to Marvel ‘s Deadpool and a long way from Guardians of the Galaxy . Here James Gunn, director of the three installments of the Guardians for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is not constrained by the limitations of films for the general public of Disney. Because The Suicide Squad is not for all audiences. No, eye, it has to be.

We continue with the absolute truths. It’s a movie that doesn’t feel the weight of the previous version of the Suicide Squad: it has nothing to do with David Ayer’s previous movie (who went through a Zack Snyder-like experience with the Justice League and doesn’t acknowledge the authorship of the film that premiered in theaters), although they repeat some of their characters. James Gunn not only gets more out of the characters of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) and Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman), but he knows how to lead actors better. For a long time I had a boss who always said that he did not understand the work of film directors and orchestra conductors.

So the suicide squad is the answer to your question. Gunn introduces us to all the characters out of the blue, without spending a whole hour to introduce them one by one, like Yesterday. And the last absolute truth, and it is told to you by someone for whom the Suicide Squad comics were his most prized possession when he was 10 years old (the crossover with the Doom Patrol, now Doom Patrol, I keep it like gold on cloth): this is it a faithful representation of the characters that John Ostrander put before us (who was recovering a pulp title whose rights DC was about to lose), of his spirit (in that it is a more Marvel movie than DC).

Yum, yum, Nanaue.

Lately we tend to overanalyze any work of fiction, including the superhero genre (or the genre of adapting characters from comics to film). And we always leave with a backpack full of expectations and prejudices. We don’t have to compare the Suicide Squad with Guardians of the Galaxy , because we’re not in the Marvel movies. You also don’t have to compare it with the rest of the DC movies because it has nothing to do with the DC movies.

Although some say that it is a reboot (yes, but no) and others that it is a sequel, The Suicide Squad It is a film that has an entity in itself. The Suicide Squad isn’t a character study either, like Joker is, and it didn’t have to be. The Suicide Squad requires action, dismemberments, explosions, exaggerated situations and impossible characters and that is exactly what James Gunn gives us. The villain choices for his Suicide Squad couldn’t be better. Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), characters with absurd powers, turn a Joker or a Deadshot a hundred times in Gunn’s hands… and I don’t want to spoil the best of the film in his hands of these two characters. If this were Marvel we would already be clamoring for series of these characters.