The Suicide Squad

Sometimes the The makes all the difference. According to Aaron Sorkin removing it from the name of a certain social network turned it into a billion-dollar business and for Warner/DC adding it to this title might have saved the DCEU.

This movie is far from perfect but it is never anything less than fun - James Gunn digs deep into his bag of tricks and is clearly having a lot of fun with fewer constraints than in the Marvel corner of his playpen. This is a violent and foul-mouthed movie from the get-go and all the more enjoyable for it.

The film is never better than when the focus is on Margot Robbie/Harley Quinn but Idris gets some nice moments as the generic 90s bad guy Bloodsport - the scene with his daughter early on was funny as hell and some of his interactions with John Cena/Peacemaker were excellent.

There were a few plot beats that felt like they'd been pinched from the Deadpool franchise and the soundtrack prominence felt like Gunn just used a left over TDK tape from Guardians.. but for me this was finally a DC movie that refused to take itself too seriously but also delivered on some thrills along the way.

I suspect they'll ignore it though and continue to make dark, po-faced, emo super-hero movies but in the meanwhile this is well worth a trip to your local Covid-safe cinema.

On that topic this was my first trip to a cinema since January 2020 - I usually average around 15 visits a year - and it wasn't too bad. I went early and there were only a few people there, the booking system took social distancing into account and generally I felt pretty safe.