Finally, months after it was first released and then removed from HBO Max, The Suicide Squad returned to televisions, and we got to watch it once the kids were asleep. It was wonderful – gory, funny, overblown in all the right ways.
We went to see Suicide Squad, the previous attempt to make a movie about a team of villains, sans definite article, in Singapore five years ago. That film was a mess, neutered by the studio and lacking plot or much cohesion at all. This new version, keeping a few characters from the original but mostly starting from scratch, was much better – coming from the same director as Slither and Guardians of the Galaxy it had all the schlock and silliness it required, but with a big budget to get everything up on the screen.
There were a lot of cuts forward and back in time, but they came together tidily, rather than as a chronological mess. Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn was lovable as ever, and there was at least some pathos in a film that was mostly just cartoon spectacle. Even prepping for a TV series spin off was done in a way that didn’t offend.
All this made it much more fun than last night’s overly pretentious, slow moving Matrix rehash. Now all that remains is to get enough sleep to manage the wrapping tomorrow …