Review: Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay

The bad guys go on an epic road trip where nearly everybody dies.  It already sounds good.

 

Overview:

Deadshot returns to lead another team of supervillains under the watchful eye of Amanda Waller.  However, this time the Suicide Squad is hoping to grab a bit of a personal item for their commander.  Joined by Boomerang, Killer Frost, Copperhead, Bronze Tiger, and fan favourite, Harley Quinn, they are sent to capture a male stripper named Steel Magnum.

It turns out the Suicide Squad is not the only supervillain group on the lookout for Waller’s prize, as Eobard Thawn a.k.a Professor Zoom leads his own bad guys into a clash with the heroes not-so-bad-guys.

Steel Magnum leads the Squad to the location of their prize, but it has fallen into the hands of a higher-class villain, Vandal Savage.  Nearly nobody survives the bloodbath that happens when these criminals and murderers clash all in the pursuit of a “Get Out of Hell Free” card that nobody is sure even works.

Our Take:

After 2014’s DC animated film Batman: Assault on Arkham came out, there was a lot of reasons to love the dark comic book supervillain team, Suicide Squad.  But then 2016 happened.  After a lot of hype leading up to the titles live-action blockbuster premiere, the film failed to impress- well, nearly anybody.  Many of us were paying close attention to the release of Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, and if it would be a return to form, or take us back to disappointment.

I am happy to say; it was not a repeat of needing to suffer through Jared Leto’s Joker.  Actually, the film had a lot of star power, and most of them delivered.  Tara Strong is always a fun Harley Quinn, and I was pleased that they did not overuse the popular character the way these shows tend to do.  Christian Slater is a brilliant voice actor and a spot-on Deadshot.  And, everyman actor, Greg Grunberg playing a failed superhero turned male stripper was a hilarious addition.

I was delighted with the number of characters they managed to involve in the plot.  One of the things that makes Suicide Squad an exciting title is the opportunity to see a lot of underutilized DC villains.  This film even managed to pull off the most obscure reference to the DCU yet, mentioning Ten-Eyed Man. Hey, the more recognizable names you can add to a comic book film the better- am I right Avengers: Infinity War?  At my count, there were 20 super-powered characters directly out of the comic books in Hell to Pay, and only two that could be considered a hero.

One thing did continuously pull me out from enjoying this movie, and I wasn’t going to mention it until it happened over a dozen times, so it happened quite a bit.  The music.  For some reason, this film has two completely different scores.  On the one hand, there is the classical ambiance building background music- the kind you usually don’t realize is on.  But, suddenly the music would change over to this guitar-heavy rock that overtook what was happening in the movie.  The rock music fits well with opening and closing credits that had a 70’s style biker movie theme going, but not as much during dialogue or a suspenseful moment.

Overall, I enjoyed the film.  I actually love everything that the DC Animated Universe puts out; I wish they would focus on making more of them instead of wasting their time on live-action.  Marvel may bring home the big numbers, but DC could make their money with a quantity of well-done animated films to build a massive universe.  I don’t know how they would do it if they keep killing characters off like they did in this film.  Seriously, almost everybody died- I loved it.