Suicide Squad is becoming the most controversial and critically panned film of the year, despite positive responses from audiences. The movie is best described as psychotic and psychedelic. It has no interest in traditional comic book movie formulas—it instead is a living comic book, non-linear and colorfully punk. The film is excellently cast and acted, the camera work and action are stylistic and beautiful, it is a fun throwback to the bullet storms of 80s and 90s cinema, and the soundtrack is wall-to-wall hit$. So why do critics hate Suicide Squad? The answer is not in Suicide Squad’s minor flaws; it is in the politics of liberal critics. They have been bloodshot over this movie since the first trailer displayed Harley Quinn getting dressed and it was seen that her costume would feature short-shorts. The criticisms of this costuming choice are body shaming, thinly disguised as feminism. The critics calling these costuming choices sexist are actually attacking the actress for her sexuality, for showing her sexuality, and for working hard to build her athletic physique. This is the same body shaming that Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot endured following the reveal of her casting.
The fit shaming was only the beginning as any liberal critic found as they started watching the movie and Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil started playing in the third scene over the introduction of the devil, Amanda Waller, portrayed through the prism of the world’s most (in)famous pant-suit wearing former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Waller is a cold-blooded military head in the US government who likes private dinners at high dollar restaurants with pricy wine that Bruce Wayne would drink. Waller assembles the Suicide Squad and it is her own black operation that leads to the conflict in the movie (unleashing the villain). She sends the Suicide Squad on a hopeless mission into Midway City to rescue a VIP from the mess that Waller has generated.
Waller watches the team from a control room filled with screens displaying the video feed of the Suicide Squad as she commands them remotely. This is where the film goes beyond Waller as Hillary and it becomes a film about a very specific suicide mission—Benghazi. Now the film has crossed the Rubicon and entered into the realm of political allegory. Now it has firmly revealed itself as a libertarian argument against Democrat’s number-one woman. Now it has punched liberal movie critics in the mouth and they are not smiling.
Critics piled on Suicide Squad and labeled it sexist, misogynist, and “hideously timed gun-worship.” The characters are flawed—they include a terrorist, an assassin, a rapist, and a cannibal serial killer; but the flaws of the characters are not to be conflated with the message of the movie. The message of the movie is actually about an inept and secretive government, police/prison corruption, mass incarceration, secret and unconstitutional detainment, and America’s need for criminal justice reform. It is an argument against the policies of the neo-libs and neo-cons.
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