The Suicide Squad

Directed by James Gunn, The Suicide Squad follows several supervillains, including Idris Elba’s Bloodsport, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, and John Cena’s Peacemaker, as they’re tasked with destroying a Nazi-era laboratory that houses a top-secret (and potentially deadly) experiment known as Project Starfish. There’s little doubt, ultimately, that The Suicide Squad fares much, much better than David Ayer’s misbegotten take on the DC Comics creation, as filmmaker Gunn, working from his own screenplay, delivers an erratically-paced actioner that remains mostly watchable for the duration of its (admittedly overlong) running time – although, by that same token, it’s certainly clear that the movie contains its fair share of padded-out, less-than-successful stretches. (An entire subplot devoted to Harley’s relationship with a newly-installed dictator isn’t nearly as clever or engaging as Ayer obviously thinks it is, for example.) It goes without saying that the picture’s mild success is due in large part to the entertaining efforts of an exceedingly eclectic cast, while the refreshingly coherent (yet predictably larger-than-life) climax ensures that the whole thing concludes on an almost incongruously positive note – which, despite Gunn’s obnoxious penchant for killing random animals, cements The Suicide Squad‘s place as a decent-enough comic-book movie that could (and should) have topped out at about 90 minutes.

**1/2 out of ****

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