REVIEW: The Suicide Squad is Not For the Faint of Heart

Warning: Major Spoilers ahead.

With more gore than the first, this movie will have you saying, “Ugh,” “Oh my god,” and “why?!” It tugs at every emotion, yet some of these characters redeem themselves by the movie’s end. I say some because the end credit scene (stay until the very end) shows a certain someone saved that I wished would have stayed dead. Written and directed by James Gunn, who is best known for his work on the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, he is back in action with The Suicide Squad. 

The movie opens in Belle Reve, the prison with the highest mortality rate housing some of the worst super-villains ever known to man, including Boomer, Weasel, TDK (The Detachable Kid), the Peacemaker, Polka-Dot Man, King Shark, Ratcatcher 2, Bloodsport, who is in there for putting Superman in the ICU with a Kryptonite bullet, and of course, Harley. Amanda Waller (played by Viola Davis), head of the prison and Task Force X, puts together two separate teams to infiltrate Jordenheim and destroy Project Starfish.

At first, Bloodsport (Idris Elba) refuses to play along. Still, Amanda blackmails him into helping, letting him know that since his teenage daughter, Tyla (Storm Reid), stole a sports watch and is old enough to be tried as an adult, she might end up in Belle Reeves and, well, she is good as dead inside there. Unfortunately, he can’t always protect her. Angered, he hesitates and almost kills Amanda himself but agrees to lead the A Team, including Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), and Peacemaker (played by John Cena). Unfortunately, most of Harley’s team is slaughtered trying to get into the town.

Margot Robbie reprises her role as Harley Quinn, Joker’s ex-girlfriend, and she’s nutty as ever, but her nutty ruthlessness is possibly what keeps her alive as well. Trying to make their way to the city, viewers see King Shark almost eat Ratcatcher 2 while she’s sleeping, but Bloodsport shoots him to stop him from completely eating her. King Shark was simply hungry, but Ratcatcher 2 declares him her friend because he won’t eat his friends. The team finds out Colonel Rick Flag (played by Joel Kinnaman), who was a part of the other team along with Harley, is still alive and go rescue him and kill all the freedom fighters, but Sol Soria (played by Alice Braga). The team quickly realizes that they killed people unnecessarily trying to rescue him. So they come up with a quick plan to get them to the heart of the city. 

Meanwhile, Harley finds out that Presidente General Silvio Luna (played by Juan Diego Botto) wants to marry her. He wines and dines her, and by the end of the night, she’s already engaged to him. She’d be Harley Luna and help run the country. After some passionate lovemaking, Harley weighs her options but grabs a gun and shoots General Luna. She’s had her fair share of madmen and doesn’t want to be married to another one. The only problem with Presidente Luna being dead is now is maniacal second-in-command, Mayor General Mateo Suarez (played by Joaquín Cosio) is now in charge.

The team kidnaps the Thinker (played by Peter Capaldi) to make sure they can get inside Jotunheim, a laboratory on the island of Corto Maltese, where experimentation takes place. Before going to Jotunheim, the team decides to rescue Harley, who is currently being tortured for information. Harley won’t talk, though. The General leaves when Harley is unconscious, telling the guard to cut her fingers when she wakes up to persuade her to talk. As soon as the General leaves, Harley wakes up from her pretend to sleep and kills the first guard with her feet and takes the keys from him and unlocks herself out of the cuffs she’s currently hanging from, and heads on out, killing every single guard in her way to freedom. The team finally gets there to rescue her, but Harley is already out on the street, appreciative of them for attempting to save her.

The team continues to Jotunheim, and once they get there, they make their way inside. Closing the guards out, they continue their journey further inside the laboratory and see the beast, Starro the Conqueror, who is let out and kills the Thinker, who had been experimenting on the beast for decades before for the government. Starro the Conqueror may be a beast, but he was an alien simply chilling in space before the US found and captured it to use it to torture and kill innocent bystanders that they were experimenting on.

Peacemaker and Rick Flag fight because Waller sent Peacemaker to make sure Jotunheim and the experiments done there stayed a secret. The two continue to fight, but Peacemaker eventually kills Rick Flag. Waller tries to kill the team for going off-mission, but back at home base, she’s knocked out by her team, who take control of the mission to save Corto Maltese. The team then goes after Starro, and Ratcatcher 2 sends the rats after it, and Harley throws the javelin in its eye, killing it. Flashback between Ratcatcher 2 and her father, Ratcatcher, tells his daughter that if even rats have a purpose, so do we all. Harley opens it up more, and the rats make their way inside and eat the inside of Starro, who reveals he was simply at peace among the stars before the government took him, and then he dies.

This team of villains actually has a bit of a soft side and saves the city. Harley Quinn, Bloodsport, King Shark, and Ratcatcher 2 are the final members of Task Force X. In the end, moviegoers also see that Weasel (played by Sean Gunn) is still alive and runs into the jungles of Corto Maltese, no doubt wreaking havoc on the villagers, who have had enough monsters to last them a lifetime.

But, wait, there’s more. Peacemaker is still alive, which we personally hate because he’s such a horrible villain. However, we suspect he’s still alive because of the upcoming series premiering on HBO Max January 2022, titled Peacemaker. We’ll just have to wait and see if we’re correct about that, but if that’s the case, maybe it’s also possible that Rick Flag isn’t really dead either. The Suicide Squad is available on HBO Max for a few more weeks and is out in theaters now.