Intelligence Officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles two task force teams known as suicide squads out of a motley collection of Belle Reve Penitentiary inmates who are offered reduced sentences if they take on a dangerous mission. They are sent to the South American nation of Corto Maltese when its governor is overthrown by an anti-American regime. They are required to destroy a Nazi-era laboratory called Jotunheim, home of Project Starfish. One team is nearly wiped out altogether when they land. Only team leader Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and the deranged Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) survive.
The deceased team includes Savant (Michael Rooker), Captain Boomarang (Digger Harkness), Blackguard (Pete Davison), The Detachable Kid (Nathan Fillion), Javelin (Flula Borg), Mongai (Mayling Ng), and Weasel (Sean Gunn). The surviving team consists of Peacemaker (John Cena), King Shark (voice of Sylvester Stallone), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchoir), and team leader Bloodsport (Idris Elba).
Waller orders the team to find Flag, who had been captured by rebel soldiers. They massacre the rebels, then learn that Flag had been saved by the rebel leader Sol Soria (Alice Braga). Soria agrees to help them infiltrate the capital, where they capture a bizarre scientist called the Thinker (Peter Capaldi). Harley is captured by the government and taken to the new dictator Silvio Luna (Juan Diego Botto), who wants to marry her. After learning his plans about Project Starfish, she kills him, then they use the Thinker to break into Jotunheim and plant explosives.
Flag and Ratcatcher enter the lab and find Starro the Conqueror, a giant starfish-shaped alien that drops off smaller versions of itself to kill people or control their bodies. The Thinker tells them that Starro was brought to Earth by the U.S. Government to experiment on the people of Corto Maltese. Flag decides to reveal this to the world but is killed by Peacemaker. Polka-Dot Man accidentally sets off the explosives and Jotunheim crumbles and collapses. The hard drive with the evidence falls into Ratcatcher’s hands. Peacemaker tries to execute her but Bloodsport shoots him and takes the drive.
Starro escapes, kills the Thinker and lots of soldiers and starts to take control of the island’s people. Waller orders the team’s survivors to leave but Bloodsport leads the team as it attacks Starro. Waller tries to execute them, but she is knocked unconscious. Starro kills Polka-Dot Man, Harley pokes a hole in its eye, and Ratcatcher summons the rats of the city to chew Starro to death from the inside. Soria takes control of the government and promises democratic elections. Bloodsport forces Waller to release him and the rest of the squad in exchange for the contents of the drive, and they are lifted out.
The film was written and directed by James Gunn of the Guardian of the Galaxy movies, as a sequel to Suicide Squad (2016), based on John Ostrander’s 1980’s Suicide Squad comic-books. It was released in 2021 simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, Critics praised the script, direction, and visual style, and many thought it better than the original Suicide Squad. But it was a box-office disappointment, which was not surprising considering the Covid Pandemic and the simultaneous HBO release.
For a while, Black Adam was to be a main villain. It was a kind of gritty 1970s war movie with a comic-book overlay, inspired by The Dirty Dozen (1967), Where Eagles Dare (1968), and Kelley’s Heroes (1970). James Gunn pored over DC comics for second-string villains to use. It was written with Idris Elba in mind to play Deadshot but changed to Bloodsport so Will Smith could return someday as Deadshot. Pete Davison of Saturday Night Live agreed to play Dick Hertz because he thought the name was funny. It received 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, largely because of its humor, its fast pace, and the violent anarchy of the story, and it was often called what the original Suicide Squad should have been. It was compared with Deadpool and thought of as a critique of U.S. imperialism.
There was a TV series called Peacemaker and talk of sequels. The stunt in which Harley Quinn unlocks her handcuffs above her head with her feet was done by Margot Robbie herself. James Gunn called her a human Swiss Army knife. Peacemaker was a kind of douchebag Captain America. Weasel is based on Bill the Cat from Bloom County. Sylvester Stallone was happy to lend his voice to a humanoid shark for James Gunn. The Detachable Kid is able to throw his limbs as weapons. One of the rats was named Crisp Ratt after Chris Pratt. Suicide Squad had some relationship with reality. It often ventured over the top but kept sight of its gritty, war-movie origin. The Suicide Squad, however, started over the top and went up from there.