Beating to a Pulp: “The Suicide Squad” and “The Protégé“

It’s summer, the concession stand is open and the confectionary is high in empty calories. It would be churlish to not do my part and spend time with the Loud and Stupid. It doesn’t have to be that way. There’s loud and smart and today’s offerings is kind of one of each. 

One knows it’s stupid and therefore is smart. The other does, too, but maybe thinks it’s cleverer than it really is. Both are well-done, so there’s that. Neither really requires much of a deep dive but that’s why summer flicks are so great. You can turn off the lights and ditch the thinking cap.

Sublimely Ridiculous: “The Suicide Squad”

Look, James Gunn’s a stone genius from the House of Troma. Most folks probably only know him from both Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but oh, would they be surprised (maybe even happily) to catch “Super” or “Slither”, both of which should be on everyone’s watchlists of all things awesome. 

When word broke that Marvel fired Gunn (yes, I wrote that), and he was going to DC/Warners for “The Suicide Squad”, two things came to mind. One, Marvel is full of idiots; two, good on DC for snagging him. Still, the Squad itself never really grabbed me in the comics but that has more to do with my lack of patience at researching story arcs and characters beyond a certain point. I also need to admit that I didn’t see David Ayers’ “Suicide Squad” or Cathy Yan’s “Birds of Prey” from last year. I heard Ayers’ opus was butchered and interfered with by studio notes and “Birds…” actually sounds pretty good. The draw would be Margot Robbie for the latter, but  it does boast a stellar cast.

But we’re not here to discuss what we haven’t seen. That would be misdirection.

Nathan Fillion doing God’s work

 And misdirection is the pivot for Gunn’s movie. It starts with a marvelous bait and switch and only gets better from there. The opening sets up our characters, half of whom are wasted within the first fifteen minutes of their mission. Beautifully, beautifully shot down. Into pieces. Nathan Fillion’s TDK is the literal (dis)embodiment of that; his TDK is one of the most ineffective mooks to ever don a costume. His demise is spectacularly funny. As Harley Quinn said, “What the fuck?” A question posed many times throughout the film.

It doesn’t really matter that one team was sent to meet the next world as a distraction so that another team could carry out the main mission. It doesn’t really matter that Sylvester Stallone plays King Shark, a literal humanoid shark who eats humans whole. “Nom-nom!” Indeed.

John Cena is the “douchey Captain America” (his words), Peacemaker who doesn’t care how many men, women, and children he has to kill to achieve peace. No, don’t think about that. Don’t ask. Just trust me: Cena’s commitment to this is note perfect. 

There were two team leaders; Joel Kinnaman as Col. Flag and Idris Elba as Bloodsport, both expert assassins, etc., etc., with a shared history/backstory, and so on and so forth. Really, does it matter? Not really; everything is a set up for the next thing in Gunn’s gloriously gory delirium. 

Of course, they drop a kid in here, too! Ratcatcher 2 played by Daniela Melchior is a quiet revelation as an actress and her superpower is that she can control rats. Her father, Ratcatcher (I guess we’d call him Ratcatcher 1), played by Taika Waititi, discovered a way to talk to the animals, well, at least, rats. Why? Because even though they are the lowliest and most despised creatures, they have purpose. He impresses upon his daughter that they, too, are similarly despised and have purpose and after his death, she takes up the mantle.

All of these folks, by the way, are feared enhanced criminals or just extremely preternaturally talented in their unique skill sets. So dangerous, that they are incarcerated at Bell Reve, a facility for the irredeemable, but by taking on these high risk missions, they can knock years off their sentences. In Bloodsport’s case, though, it’s not about that; the director of the agency that sends them out on these suicide missions threatens to have his daughter jailed at Bell Reve for shoplifting if he doesn’t comply. 

Elba plays Bloodsport with a number of layers of substance and resignation (the number of times he lets out an under the breath “oh, for fuck’s sake” has to be some kind of record, but fits every time). He and Melchior have a solid rapport (as she does with Stallone’s CG Shark, who is one of my favorite FX characters this side of Rocket and Groot). 

Above all this and driving the Squad from on high is Viola Davis as Amanda Wailer, the director of the program that sends these misbegotten souls out to die (and even succeed sometimes) on these missions. Davis is one of the greatest actors we have and it’s incredibly funny how much gravitas and dare I see, real stakes, she and Elba bring to these pretty ludicrous proceedings. She’s a stone cold bitch who doesn’t flinch when it looks like Bloodsport is going to drive an Exacto knife (or a pen? I don’t really recall) into her neck. She brings up her daughter and convinces him that joining the mission would be in his best interest. Join, hell, lead it.

I’ve left out everyone’s favorite maniac, Harley Quinn played to demented, disassociated perfection by Ms. Robbie. She is a joy to watch, even as (especially as?) she’s slicing and dicing attackers, brutally beating the ever loving crap out of various and sundry and murdering her latest boyfriend, the president of Corto Maltese, the island nation that the teams have been employed to infiltrate to eliminate all vestiges of Operation Starfish. 

Harley was with the diversionary team, as was Flag; both survived and while he escaped to join up with the rebels who were working to overthrow the dictatorship, Harley was captured and eventually brought to the president’s palace because, well, he has plans for her. Juan Diego Botto, the terrific Argentine actor, plays El Presidente Silvio Luna as a hopeless romantic and a true creep. He impresses on Harley that she represents everything the people of Corto Maltese love; she’s a strong woman who’s obviously anti-American and he, well, the people feel he needs to be married. A strong man must have a strong woman by his side. 

Of course, they seal the deal and it looks like we might end up with First Lady Harley Luna until ol’ Silvio has to go on about slaughtering parents and children to ensure his rule. After Harley pops a cap in him and as he’s bleeding out on a lovely carpet, she explains that she’s aware of her dubious taste in men and has learned to recognize red flags, a sure one being that of murdering kids. She’s so grown up now…sigh.

Flag, meanwhile, has been “liberated” by his teammates. When they find him discussing plans to capture the palace in exchange for getting close to the site of Project Starfish, the “oh, shit” moment of discovering that the team executed the whole security team is pretty priceless. Alice Braga (another wonderful actor who deserves more) plays Sol Soria, the rebel leader. She seems to have taken the loss of her guards in stride (and they do die well…plus, awesome dialog throughout).

Project Starfish, by the way, is the result of the U.S. attempting to weaponize a giant one-eyed starfish who was brought back from a space mission during the Reagan years. We couldn’t chance its discovery on US soil, so the experiments were conducted in a tiny nation in a facility used by the Nazis (that does kind of resemble a smokestack from one of the camps.) Inside, we discover that victims were taken from the opposition and exposed to Starro’s parasitic face-hugging individual replicas or clones. Apparently, this is how Starro would propagate and/or take over a host - be it an individual or an entire collective. The man in charge is no less than Dr. Who. Uh, Peter Capaldi, playing The Thinker. And oh, yes, more please. He’s delicious. 

I swear, the beauty of this film is how fully it embraces the comic book absurdity unbound by considerations of restraint; as batshit as the premises become (incrementally and then exponentially), everyone remains grounded and true to their character. All of this crazy sells big-time.

Drilling down into details is pointless. There are so many rich moments, great cameos (Gunn has the best repertory cast this side of Joss Whedon…and they both have Fillion between them!) How the team is kept in check (explosive devices at the base of their skulls will be detonated if they go against orders) via surveillance is circumvented smartly and the set-up for that (including a tontine scene) calls up “The Cabin in the Woods”. 

Gunn brought Henry Braham over from “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2” who shows a visual flare far beyond almost anything the DCEU has seen (he also shot “The Golden Compass” and “Nanny McPhee”, for Pete’s sake). The inimitable John Murphy composed the soundtrack and as you can guess, the soundtrack is awesome. Let’s just say that if you’re going to use “People Who Died” by Jim Carroll, you now have this flick to contend with in terms of how well used it is. 

As you can tell, I don’t really want to go over this wonderful little Indy film in too much detail; it’s such a full-out bonkers Troma meets Marvel DC that it needs to be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated. 

Random bits:

Polka Dot Man. How could I not mention Polka Dot Man? David Dastmalchian brings understated cool to a truly troubled individual (among others? How wins in the Damaged Sweepstakes?) “I am a motherfucking super-hero!” Yeah…

Bloodsport: No one likes a show-off.

Peacemaker: Unless what they're showing off is dope as fuck.

Bloodsport: [under his breath] Fuck. That's true.

[Starro appears] 

John Economos: Oh my god, we've got a freaking kaiju up in this shit! <— This. Economos is one of the control room analysts and this is exactly what I would expect anyone to say if they saw a giant cyclopean starfish crushing buildings.

Harley Quinn: I love the rain, it's like angels are splooging all over us! <Oh, Harley. Don’t ever change.>

Speaking of Harley, here’s her soliloquy to her dying fiancé: 

Harley Quinn: Recently, I made a promise to myself that the next time I got a boyfriend, I'd be on the lookout for red flags. And if I saw any, I would do the healthy thing and I would murder him. And killing kids? Kind of a red flag.

There is no meaningful way to convey how great Peter Capaldi’s line reading of this is. If you haven’t seen the film, do your best to imagine it:

Ratcatcher II: How would you like it if I sent half a dozen rats up your ass?

Thinker: You might be surprised by my response.

Just some stills that serve to sort of show off Braham’s cinematography:

More pulp with that? “The Protégé”

For sure, Martin Campbell’s joy ride is self-aware, but takes itself a little too seriously because while it commits to its premise as much, say, as “The Suicide Squad” commits to its premise, “The Protégé“ fails to see how incredibly ridiculous it all is. Of course, plot veracity is second banana to thematic threads here.

It’s about family!

Not to “Fast and Furious” levels, but Maggie Q owes her life and career as a bookstore owning assassin to Samuel L. Jackson’s Moody. She made her first kill before she’d met him and showing natural talent, one supposes it was a no-brainer for Moody to teach her the ins and outs of his trade as yet another World’s Greatest Hitman. Seriously, how many of these people are there? Even before John Wick, the case could be made that James Bond was likely the world’s greatest assassin (sure, he’s technically a spy; but let’s face it, Bond raises a body count with every arch of his eyebrow). 

Anyway, Anna (Q) and Moody do make for a fun pair and he’s really not that paternal toward her; they do seem to be equals and again, like so many of professionals, only whack the bad guys or guys who had it coming. In fact, come to think of it, I got the sense that this could be a kind of sequel to Luc Besson’s “The Professional” except that Jackson’s Moody is much more socially adapted than Reno’s Leon; but Maggie Q’s Anna could well be Natalie Portman’s Mathilda all grown up.

We get, pretty early on, that Moody has a pretty chronic medical condition. We can pretty much figure out that he’ll not make it out of the film alive and that he will meet his demise at the hands of figures shadowy and nefarious and this will drive Anna to track them down and make the people responsible pay and pay dearly. So when that moment comes, in a pretty nifty series of cuts that recreate what happened that Anna visualizes as she traces the carnage in Moody’s mansion, we’re not terribly shocked. Or even sad. 

Jackson turns in another typically Samuel L. Jackson performance (which is awesome, because, well, Samuel L. Jackson). Maggie Q continues to bring shades and nuances of character to figures that other actors might tend to miss. Anna isn’t necessarily a stock assassin, either. She’s another read on the “female assassin” type that we’ve seen recently in both “Gunpowder Milkshake” and “Black Widow”, but to be sure, is growing increasingly familiar (“Atomic Blonde”, “Red Sparrow”, et al.); in any case, she’s brings a fascinating energy and a physicality that gives us a reason why she comes across as this super capable lethal weapon. 

The bookshop is a real bookshop, by the way. It’s not the front for weapons of “Gunpowder Milkshake” and the Wick world. So when Michale Keaton’s Michael Rembrandt shows up using the story that he wants to buy a rare first edition for his boss, it plays organically. You know that he knows that Anna is not just a bookstore owner; but you question why she didn’t pick up on him not being who he presents as. Doesn’t really matter. You also know that the bookstore is going to be toast, you also know that Keaton is party to that happening, and it’s not long before the film tips its hand to reveal that he’s not the Big Bad; that would be “The Crown”’s David Rintoul as Edward Hayes with another backstory. 

That backstory…so many backstories in these things…connects back to a job Moody did to take out Hayes so Hayes could change identity, set up a trust for his fund to be taken care of at a charitably run medical facility in Vietnam, and continue to be a rat bastard of enormous dimension. 

If you’re getting the sense that the premises floated in this movie are ridiculous, you’re not alone. That said, the poker face that Campbell drives the car with is admirable and while it doesn’t quite seem to embrace the silliness of those premises, he coasts along with it well enough. Unlike “Casino Royale”, there’s no emotional root here. We don’t see any characters enduring any great trauma (Anna is so damned competent, she makes Daniel Craig’s Bond in that Campbell directed outing look like a simpering sissy.) 

There is, however, plenty of action and Keaton very nearly walks off with the film every time he shows up. His stunt double does some great work and the tight shots on him make it almost believable that he could be a killing machine. What he’s also able to pull off is that he and Anna wind up in bed together. Again, this is a testament to a script that is so malleable that this could happen and two actors who can sell it. 

I could go on about the little character moments where we learn that Anna loves her cat, that Moody loves the blues and plays a bit of guitar, that Rembrandt can quote Poe. And so on. But we stick around for the fightin’, the bang bang shoot ‘em ups, and ‘splosions. We do. 

Hayes is moderately engaging but not really much of a threat, at the end of the day, and if the denouement is less than the sum of the parts that led up to it, well, that’s the narrative exhaustion that seems to afflict most movies like this. The third acts are often expository wrap-ups and this one is no different.

It’s still fun to look at. SPOILER: Moody shows up in the third act to provide closure and how he’s survived is not the lamest set-up I’ve seen. But frankly, again, I wasn’t surprised. It’s less a matter of surprise that he shows up than how the filmmakers have assembled the pieces to make it happen. Not bad, but meh.

Suffice it to say that Hayes’ demise is a matter of baiting and switching and while Rembrandt is off trying to kill Anna, Moody has Hayes cornered for the kill. Of course, that leaves things open for our surviving killer couple and that’s not the most compelling of finales. Well, maybe, maybe not. SPOILER (again): it comes down to a standoff where Anna tells Rembrandt that she can’t have a world in which he’s out and about. Rembrandt begs to differ and suggests they both move on. Each has guns drawn on the other, naturally. EXTERIOR SHOT: two gun shots, shadowy figure against a window, exiting the scene. Anna, bloody from tow earlier shots, stands in the doorway of the building at the foot of the stairs. END.

Oh, forgot: the building they’re in is where Anna’s journey began. It’s where she wasted a bunch of scumbags and where Moody found her hiding in a cabinet as he came on the scene to meet a victim of one of said scumbags. Ah, yes, it all comes full circle.

Killing Rembrandt (if that’s what happened) is kind of a dick move. The man is clearly smitten by her and he has a strong argument for each of them moving on (for fuck’s sake, his employer and organization are gone and Anna’s mentor is dead…) but she decides to off him anyway.

It could be that there is an element of ambiguity here: just because we only see Anna at the end doesn’t mean that Rembrandt didn’t live. They may well have fired past each other and agreed to move on, after all. A sequel? Aw, who knows? Cares?

All of this okay. You can read these spoilers, forget about them, go see the movie or rent it on streaming, and you will probably forget it all again. Campbell has done some fine work: “Casino Royale”, as noted, but also “Goldeneye”, “The Mark of Zorro”, and not so fine work…uh, “Green Lantern.” This is somewhere in between. It doesn’t have the emotional connections of “Casino…” or the fun of either “Goldeneye” or “..Zorro”; but it does have sufficient elements of both to make it engaging enough. 

It’s a nicely lensed flick. David Tattersall shot all three Star Wars prequels which for all their narrative and performance flaws (you’ve heard about those, right?), remain gorgeous to look at. He also shot “The Green Mile” and “Die Another Day”, maybe not the best Bond flick, but again, pretty enough. He also, and this cannot be mentioned enough, was the DP for “Theodore Rex”!!! For a far better analysis of that cinematic masterpiece, I have to refer you to a much better critic. 

TIME FOR A DIGRESSION: 

Here is as good a place as any to stump for Nathan Rabin. If you haven’t, go to Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place and plunder the insane amount of treasure that lies there.

At some point, I’ll post an entry on contemporary film critics I follow (and there is a small legion of them), but Rabin was the first voice at The Onion’s AV Club that drew me in (in print, no less) and kept me coming back. The AV Club developed a serious stable of critics that eventually split off to form The Dissolve which, well, dissolved. Even so, I’ve continued to follow them onto other outlets and platforms. 

I still turn to the AV Club for its film reviews. Alex Dowd and Katie Rife are two of the most engaging voices in film criticism and Tom Breihan and Caroline Siede have contributed several series that should be required reading.

Film Crit is still very much alive in the U.S. and to be sure, you will find academically top-heavy writing/wankery in “serious film journals”; but there are plenty of smart, well thought out pieces to be had by the current generation of critics. 

Much of what is out there owes existence to the late, great Roger Ebert. Lots of honest voices that aren’t necessarily beholden to one or another type of film criticism. Voices like Andre Bazin, Susan Sontag,  Pauline Kael, or Penelope Gilliat still echo through the generations, but I don’t know that there are many (any?) with quite the same degree of influence. 

It may not matter. It’s enough that there are plenty of people passionate about and possessed of acute critical acumen to continue writing about movies. And that does matter; movies remain a vital and still-communal art form and we are the richer for them.