Let me preface my review of “The Suicide Squad” (American; 2021; superhero/action/adventure/comedy; run time 2 hours, 13 minutes; directed and written by James Gunn, based on DC Comics characters; rated R for pervasive language and violence, blood, drug use, brief graphic nudity, some sexual references; in theaters and streaming on HBO Max) with some admissions:

• I only watched it because my son, who had already seen it, insisted.
• I didn’t want to watch it because movies like this are not my thing. They’re largely the opposite of my thing.
• I could go the entirety of the rest of my life and not see another comic book movie and be just fine. I have watched a lot of them (most of them, including all the MCU movies) and am just over the whole thing … and probably was maybe 10 films ago. 

That said, “The Suicide Squad” wasn’t awful. It was over the top, but not as over the top as I expected. Sure, it sticks closely to a lot of the comic book formula (but not as close as, say, an MCU movie), like the slow-motion group walk introduction, the frequent needle drops, the snarky (and in this case vulgar at times) comedy and the occasional gentle tugging at the heartstrings. It seemed awfully similar to Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies (no surprise, I suppose, since Gunn helmed those too) if those also had been given the rated R treatment. “The Suicide Squad” is entertaining, maybe a little corny, not terribly deep or important, kind of messy but good, unclean, loud and flashy fun. And it represents a giant leap from David Ayer’s 2016 train wreck called “Suicide Squad.”

In Gunn’s version, the government assembles a team of supervillains – Idris Elba as Bloodsport, John Cena as Peacemaker, Sylvester Stone as the CGI King Shark, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher and David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man – and dispatches them to the remote island of Corto Maltese, where something called “Project Starfish” is being developed in the Nazi-era laboratory Jotunheim by Gaius Grieves (Peter Capaldi). If that plot sounds ridiculous, it is, but let’s keep in mind this is a comic book movie. The squad will get some help on the ground from Col. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and try to rescue Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), but if we’ve learned anything from a couple of Robbie’s appearances as Quinn, she probably doesn’t need the help. Running the show from command central is suitably corrupt government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who mostly makes threats and rivals just about any Samuel L. Jackson performance when it comes to F-bombs. The story matters little, really, other than a means of hitting the prerequisite comedic and sentimentality checkpoints and as an excuse for all that comic-book type of gore (you won’t see heads sliced in half in your basic PG-13 MCU movie) and all things blowing up or being shot. And if we’re lucky, the Suicide Squad is going to save the world.

The cast seems all-in for the gonzo nature of the material. Robbie is again wildly entertaining and just plain wild, Elba adds a touch of his coolness to the otherwise menacing Bloodsport, and Cena is funny in spots, though this and “F9” are probably about all of him I need to see for a while, maybe forever. Dastmalchian’s weirdness also was fun. The movie builds to your typical comic book movie showdown climax, and seeing a giant starfish wreaking havoc on the world by shooting out little starfishes that grab onto human faces and then suck the souls out of them is as strange and fascinating as it sounds. There’s a touch of weirdness to the entire film that sets it apart from a lot of superhero movies. I will have forgotten about “The Suicide Squad” in a couple of weeks, if not a couple of days, but it was a good time while it lasted.

My score: 73 out 100