“Suicide Squad” is an exciting change of pace from the typical superhero flick. Not unlike its predecessor “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” it opened last weekend with strong box office results despite poor critical reviews. The film earned a record-breaking $65 million last Friday, beating “Guardians of the Galaxy” for the best August opening ever.
The movie centers on a team of criminals secretly assembled by the U.S. government in order to complete black ops missions and combat metahuman threats. Featuring villains like Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and El Diablo, the Suicide Squad operates under the watchful eye of taskmaster Amanda Waller, with a bomb implanted in each member’s neck to prevent any insubordination.
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The highlight of this movie is how it plays with the notion of what being “good” or “evil” really means (although I would be remiss not to also give nods to the excellent soundtrack selections and Jared Leto’s Joker). Almost every character exists in a flux state between the two extremes, playing both relatable and despicable roles in varying measures. There are countless examples — Deadshot (Will Smith), in particular, stands out as a figure of conflict trying to reconcile the two halves of his personality: trained expert mercenary and caring, devoted dad.
“Suicide Squad,” much like last summer’s surprise superhero hit “Ant-Man,” flips the script on the typically straightforward nature of good and evil in superhero movies. It takes the genre and uses its heightened reality as a platform to reflect on the real world. In life, we seldom see a stark black and white moral contrast. Instead, the world exists in shades of gray, and it’s up to us to decide every day how we interpret those shades and react to them.
During one of the movie’s few quiet moments, “Suicide Squad” offers a solution: Embracing flaws, not only in each other but in ourselves. The entire squad is at a bar when El Diablo finally opens up and reveals the demons from his past that he’s been trying to keep at a distance. At first, the team is appalled by his confession. But it’s Harley that breaks the silence and tells Diablo what he needs to hear: He must own up to what he’s done if he ever hopes to overcome it.
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“We’re all ugly on the inside,” she tells him, echoing the film’s repeated motif that this group is built of, as Amanda Waller describes them, “the worst of the worst … who I think can do some good.”
To paraphrase “Batman Begins,” “Suicide Squad” is not about who these characters are underneath, but what they do that defines them. While they are undoubtedly all criminals, they nonetheless have the capacity to do good and to be good. It’s not the lesson I would have expected to take away from a neon-tinted, hip-hop-blasting, comic book movie at the end of the summer, but it’s a great one.