Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 17 April

The Suicide Squad (Gunn, 2021)

I’m about to declare stream­ing TV bank­ruptcy as the last few weeks have seen more intriguing series drop than it is pos­sible to watch.

Ripley (Netflix), Shogun (Disney+/Hulu), 3 Body Problem (Netflix), The Régime and The Sympathizer (Neon/Max), Sugar, Palm Royale and Manhunt (AppleTV+), plus shows that my RNZ col­leagues have been recom­mend­ing like The Walk-In (TVNZ+) and Samurai Gourmet (Netflix) on top of the already very long ‘to watch’ list means the task in front of me is daunting.

Add the conun­drum that what I might choose to watch for fun isn’t always what someone will pay me to write about, and some­thing has to give.

Last night that some­thing was Fallout, the new video game adapt­a­tion from the Westworld people. We gave it one epis­ode and decided that life was, indeed, too short. It was too glee­fully viol­ent, too nihil­ist­ic, for our cur­rent mood. And, per­son­ally, I’ve seen too many futur­ist­ic shows where the aes­thet­ic is a mix of 50s futur­ism and fant­ast­ic­al tech­no­lo­gies. Get a new schtick, people.

Happy for read­ers to try and per­suade me – that’s what the com­ment func­tion is for – but for now Fallout has fallen out of the queue.

Today’s selec­tion has its share of glee­ful viol­ence but also a sur­pris­ing amount of tick­er, thanks to writer-director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy).

I reviewed it on 11 August 2021 for RNZ (just before we went into anoth­er cinema crush­ing nation­wide Covid lockdown):

Just like the first film, Viola Davis is a gov­ern­ment secur­ity offi­cial recruit­ing crim­in­als and assor­ted head cases to take on impossible but essen­tial under­cov­er missions.

In the latest ver­sion, she has chosen Idris Elba, also known as the assas­sin Bloodsport, John Cena as the deranged fas­cist Peacemaker, Daniela Melchior as a young woman who can sum­mon rats and Sylvester Stallone as the voice of a shark who can walk on land.

Along with the rest of their team, the task is to infilt­rate the Latin American island of Corto Maltese, which thanks to a mil­it­ary coup has a new lead­er who looks like just like Lionel Messi, and then des­troy the secret American-funded Nazi research facil­ity which con­tains an ali­en star­fish with the capa­city to des­troy the world, by crikey.

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Unbeknownst to them, the anti-hero of three pre­vi­ous films, Harley Quin, played with an enthu­si­asm com­men­sur­ate with her love of the char­ac­ter as well as her obvi­ous con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion, by Margot Robbie, is also on the island and has a mis­sion of her own.

The Suicide Squad was the first time I was con­scious of the geni­us of David Dastmalchian, cur­rent star of the hit hor­ror Late Night with the Devil:

The Suicide Squad fol­lows a pre­dict­able path with its humour – set up and then rug pulling over and over – but is more inter­est­ing in its wider con­text. Unlike the pseudo-politics of the Marvel movies where no régime ever gets called out by name, this pic­ture does­n’t shy away from high­light­ing the vic­tims of American excep­tion­al­ism in Latin America over the past fifty years, along with the cor­rup­tion and degrad­a­tion that goes along with it.

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Ironic then that Panama, by offer­ing the stu­dio a back­drop for the recre­ation of their own exploit­a­tion and then giv­ing the stu­di­os a sub­sidy, ends up kiss­ing the ring of Western cap­it­al­ists for Yankee dol­lars once again.

But, let’s not for­get that it’s the Suicide Squad with the heart of gold. Almost every char­ac­ter has a trau­mat­ic back­story and a redempt­ive arc. This squad just needs a hug. Even someone who has to shoot leth­al polka dots out of his skin twice a day simply to sur­vive, has a des­per­ately sad story of abuse and neg­lect at his heart. But we laugh at him just the same.

Also in that edi­tion of At the Movies in August 2021: NZ thrill­er Coming Home in the Dark and the Chilean doc­u­ment­ary The Mole Agent.

Where to watch The Suicide Squad

Aotearoa: Streaming on ThreeNow

Australia: Streaming on Foxtel Now

Canada: Digital rental

USA: Streaming on Max

UK: Streaming on Netflix

Further reading

The New Zealand edi­tion of the Italian Film Festival runs for ten months (!) across the coun­try from 29 April. I was lucky enough to be giv­en a sneak pre­view of three of the titles that fea­ture and wrote them up for RNZ.