Suicide Squad

Year of Release:  2016
Director:  David Ayer
Screenplay:  David Ayer, based on characters from DC Comics
Starring:  Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ike Barinholz, Scott Eastwood, Cara Delevingne, Karen Fukuhara
Running Time:  123 minutes
Genre:  Action, superhero

This film had a lot of weight on it before release.  After the critical failure of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), this was the film that, it was hoped, would salvage the DC Comics Cinematic Universe.  The story takes up shortly after the events of Batman v Superman.  Realising that the American people are now living in a world of supermen, batmen and wonder women, and all their dastardly villains too, intelligence agent Amanda Waller (Davis) devises a task force made up of dangerous "metahuman" (superpowered) criminals: Elite hitman Deadshot (Smith), the deranged Harley Quinn (Robbie), pyrokinetic ex-gangster El Diablo (Hernandez), opportunistic thief Captain Boomerang (Courtney), reptilian cannibal Killer Croc (Akinnuoye-Agbaje), mercenary Slipknot (Adam Beach), and powerful, ancient witch The Enchantress whose spirit inhabits the body of archaeologist Dr. June Moone  (Delevingne).  The idea is that they will be forced to combat any alien or metahuman threat.  They are put under the command of  tough Colonel Rick Flagg (Kinnaman), who is also June's boyfriend and hopes to rid her of The Enchantress.  The members of the task force are implanted with small but lethal bombs to ensure their compliance, and are watched over by swordfighter Katana (Fukuhara), whose sword harvests souls.  Of course, before long they are sent out on a mission against an otherworldly threat, while also being pursued themselves by Harley's psychotic and abusive boyfriend, The Joker (Leto).

The behind the scenes stories surrounding this film have become almost legendary (for example Jared Leto, who allegedly never broke character throughout the entire shoot, sending dead rats and other animals to members of the cast).  The film was also heavily edited after test screenings.  The film is kind of messy, it tries to pack too much into too short a time and suffers from the problem that a lot of franchise movies seem to have of feeling like a trailer for other movies.  The tone is inconsistent throughout, moving from fizzy, day-glo, punk-rock style to a dour, gloomy action film and back again.  However there is a lot to like about it and it is an entertaining film.  The action scenes, by and large, are exciting and well choreographed, and the characters are intriguing (unfortunately many of the Squad members, such as Katana and Killer Croc never really get a chance to shine).  The performances are good with Will Smith as charismatic as ever, making Deadshot an appealing and interesting character, despite being a ruthless assassin, with a cliched backstory (he's doing it for his daughter, bless 'im).  Margot Robbie is superb as the volatile Harley Quinn, although Jared Leto, for all his method acting,  makes the Joker like a particularly eccentric 1940s crime boss, without the nihilistic edge that Heath Ledger had in The Dark Knight (2008).  Also it never really explores the sheer wrongness of Harley and the Joker's relationship.  Viola Davis impresses as the chilling Amanda Waller, who is a big believer in the ends justifying any means.  Ben Affleck appears briefly as Batman.

The DC Comics movies seem to be aiming for a darker tone to the essentially upbeat Marvel Comics films, and that is no bad thing.  Although, aside from Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy which seems to have been removed from the DC Cinematic Universe, there has yet to be a truly great film, but hopefully that will come.

Suicide Squad is a fun, exciting mess, that has a lot wrong, but is never less than entertaining.  Hopefully there will be a director's cut released at some point.

Meet the Suicide Squad: Jai Courtney, Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Karen Fukuhara, Joel Kinnaman, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Jay Hernandez
        

The Thing (2011)

Year:  2011
Director:  Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Screenplay:  Eric Heisserer, based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell
Starring:  Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Eric Christian Olsen, Trond Espen Seim
Running Time:  102 minutes
Genre:  Horror, science-fiction, action

Okay, first things first, despite it's title this is not a remake of the 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing which itself was inspired by the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World, which were both adapted from the 1938 story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell.  Instead this is a prequel to the 1982 film.

 Antarctica, 1982, a Norwegian research expedition discovers an alien spacecraft frozen for thousands of years in the ice and, a short distance away, the frozen body of it's occupant.  A young American paleontologist, Kate Lloyd (Winstead), is sent in to help analyse the frozen body, which is sealed in a solid block of ice.  However, when the officious lead scientist (Thomsen) orders a tissue sample taken from the creature, aganst Kate's advice, the Thing begins to reawaken.  Before long it has burst out of the ice and is on the loose around the station, attacking the occupants until it is burned to death.  However, that is only the beginning, because Kate soon realises that the shape-shifting alien has the ability to infect it's victims at the cellular level, and to transform their cells into it's cells, and thusly perfectly imitate any life form, hiding unitl it is ready to attack.  She soon discovers that any one of the expedition may be The Thing.

This is a fun, tense blend of science-fiction and horror, which creates a strong sense of claustrophobia and suspense.  It also deserves points for not being  a remake.  The problem is that we have been here before.  It doesn't offer much that was not there in it's predecessor.  There are plenty of the nightmarish transformations and flesh tearing mutations that were such a hallmark of the 1982 version, but this time round they have kind of lost their shock value.  Certainly there is nothing to compare with the legendary stomach suddenly growing teeth or the severed head scuttling around on spider legs in the earlier film, although both of them are referenced.  It also has several nods to the 1951 film most notably in the alien defrosting from ice and also from the depiction of sinister and/or cowardly scientists who need to be kept in line by tough, pragmatic macho men, the exception being tough, pragmatic scientist Kate, whose character bears a very strong resemblance to Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the Alien movies.  The film does well, though in the depiction of the paranoia and claustrophobia of the characters, who if anyhtng are even more distrustful of each other than in the earlier film.  In the 1982 version a kind of blood test was used to check who was human and who wasn't, in this movie the only thing they can do is check people's fillings (which the alien cannot absorb and so spits out).  Which is bad news for anyone with clean teeth or porcelain fillings.

This is a fun suspenseful action film which comes nowhere close to eclipsing it's predecessor, but does at least complement it.   

Mary Elizabeth Winstead warms up in The Thing