The newcomers include Idris Elba as exasperated hitman Bloodsport, combining natural leadership qualities with a foul-mouthed antiheroic streak. After the anemic Birds of Prey, Robbie gets to deliver her most full-blooded turn as DC's breakout star Harley Quinn, falling in love and machine-gunning henchmen in a torn frock and combat boots. Alongside Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney and Margot Robbie return from the first film. One of the first movie's biggest strengths was the casting, and the same is true here. Curse-filled complications and insanely violent high jinks ensue. This time they're infiltrating a South American island to take out a newly installed military junta and wipe out a mysterious superweapon. Like the first movie, the plot involves a bunch of comic book convicts with questionable superpowers being pressed into the service of black ops puppetmaster Amanda Waller, played with dead-eyed steel by Viola Davis. This is a movie where the US government hires a shark that talks like Sylvester Stallone to tear people in half. Freed of Marvel's family-friendly fetters, the man who began his career at B-movie trash palace Troma has found the perfect home for his gloriously bad-taste blend of gore and classic rock '80s action flicks and forgotten comics and the most scurrilous of humor and foulest of language. And DC's Dirty Dozen suits Gunn even better than the MCU's Guardians. When old tweets got him into hot water at Marvel, rival comic conglomerate DC snapped him up to revitalize another oddball ensemble: the neon-drenched, face-tattooed 2016 Suicide Squad movie misfire. It's written and directed by James Gunn, whose Guardians of the Galaxy movies injected weirdo sci-fi and a hefty dose of humor into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 5) but The Suicide Squad is the definite article. It didn't do so great in theaters (possibly because it's streaming on HBO Max until Sep. This scabrous, side-splitting and surprisingly smart supervillain romp is less of a sequel and more of a desperately needed 2021 do-over of the 2016 original. There's a reason this movie's called The Suicide Squad and not Suicide Squad 2. Squad goals: Joel Kinaman, Idris Elba and John Cena lead DC's 2021 Suicide Squad.