"The Suicide Squad": Two Gay Hints, Two Hunks in their Underwear, and 3,234 Corpses

 Last night's movie night was The Suicide Squad (2021), in which incarcerated DC supervillains and serial killers are offered years off their sentences in exchange for performing a super-dangerous "suicide" mission: the small Latin American country of Corto Maltese has been taken over by a military dictator unfriendly to the U.S., so a U.S.-supported research facility called Jotunheim for some reason is in jeopardy.  Rather than let the research fall into enemy hands, the Suicide Squad must destroy Jotunheim.  

The suicide squad is killed within the first five minutes, mostly by the huge army that meets them, but one drowns, and Savant (Woody Harrelson), who has been set up as the focus character, gets his head exploded by the boss back at headquarters.  This was a very short movie!  Psych -- there's a second suicide squad.  The first, untrained and totally inept, was sent in as a distraction.  The second will go in secretly.  But "kill everyone you see."

It consists of:

1. Bloodsport (Idris Elba).  I don't know what his superpower is, but he has a dead wife and teenage daughter.

2. Peacemaker (John Cena, left).  A jerk with no superpowers but a nice physique.

3. King Shark (Sylvester Stallone, unrecognizable): A human-shark hybrid who is invincible, but has the habit of eating random people.

4. Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian, left),  who can kill people with multicolored interdimensional pustules that grow on his body.

5. Rat Catcher 2 (Dana Melchior), apparently the daughter of Rat Catcher 1, who can control rats -- very handy for destroying technology and killing people.

Before going to the facility, they have to rescue a survivor of the first squad, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman, left), who has been captured.  So they kill almost everybody at his camp before discovering that he's actually been rescued by anti-dictator freedom fighters!

Another survivor of the first squad, effervescent, deranged Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), is captured, dressed in a Cinderella outfit, and taken to the palace, where military dictator Silvio Luna (Juan Diego Botto) wants to date her.  They hang out and have sex (off camera), but Harley soon sours on the idea and kills him.  As well as about 300 palace guards and soldiers.

The facility contains a giant alien starfish-shaped being who can extrude small versions of itself that grab your face and kill you.  It can then control your actions.  It does this with around 3,000 townsfolk before the Suicide Squad subdues it.  Almost all of them die in the battle, or in a disagreement about whether to expose U.S. involvement in the starfish experiment.  

So it's basically two hours of watching people get killed.  I was not impressed.

Well, I did like four things about it:

1. Minimal heterosexual romance.  Nothing except for Harley dating General Luna.  One expects Rick Flagg to hook up with freedom fighter Soria (Alice Braga), but he doesn't.  

2. No naked ladies.  When the squad is told to track down General Luna at a "gentleman's club," I thought "Why does there always have to be a scene of naked ladies gyrating on poles?", but in fact the ladies are singing, not gyrating, and fully clothed.  And there are men and women both in the audience.  

3. Beefcake.  Peacemaker walks around in his underwear, showing a blatant bulge.  General Luna is introduced climbing out of his bathtub in a Speedo.  

4. Gay references.  No one actually says the word, but at the gentlemen's club, among the men and women dancing together, two men are getting chummy.  I think it was Rick Flag cruising a local.  

Plus Polka Dot Man becomes distraught over the death of the driver, Malcolm.  "I liked him from the start, but I didn't say anything because...."  he begins, before being cut off (and later killed).  Sounds like he was about to reveal a same-sex crush.

Apparently this is not the first iteration of the Suicide Squad.  They have appeared in comics since 1987, and an earlier movie, called Suicide Squad without the definite article (2016), featured some of the same characters.  So no one is going to be canonically gay.  But for a comic book movie, gay hints are enough.

"Black Summer," Season 2: Bury Your Hunks

I watched the first season of Black Summer when it appeared on Netflix two years ago: the first days of a zombie Apocalypse (very fast-moving zombies, not the Walking Dead kind).  Everyone is rushing through the ruins of Calgary, trying to "find my husband!" or "find my wife!"  No gay characters, no gay subtexts, only the tiniest bits of buddy-bonding that come crashing down when one or both of the guys gets monsterized.

Did I expect anything better from the second season?  I went through each episode until it was impossible to stomach, and then depended on plot synopses.

1. The Cold.  A man drives a car through a zombie-infested park.  He drives past a couple of men asking for help, but stops for a lady.  Sure, he stops for the girl.  But it's a trick: she has a partner (Kelsey Flower)
who kills him so they can steal the car.  

The rest of the episode is mostly about people asking other people for help, and being killed.

2. Prelude.  Officer Ray Nazeri (Bobby Naderi) quickly packs his stuff, while saying "Don't worry, babies.  It will just be a few more minutes." But his kids have already turned into zombies.  He leaves.

The kids look to be in their early teens.  I have never heard any father refer to any children over the age of 5 as "babies."

Meanwhile, two guys are  scavenging in a store.  Anna comes to the door: "Please let me in!"  They do.  So, in the Apocalypse, men are zombie chow, but women can get whatever they want?  But it's a trick -- Anna lets her group in (Rose, Spear, and Sun) to take all their supplies.

Later, Spear (Justin Chu Cary, top photo) is shot, so the rest of the group throw him down an embankment to die.  Sun, who speaks no English, is separated from the group.  Rose and Anna, a mother and daughter, approach a mansion.

3. The Card Game.  Freddie (G. Michael Gray), Sonny (Dakota Daulby, left), and their mother are holed up in the mansion.  Anna comes to the door and yells "Please let me in!  I'm a girl!"  They argue, but decide that since she's a girl and therefore precious in the Apocalypse, ok. They play cards, go on a supply run, and eventually Anna and Rose kill Sonny and the mother.  Freddie survives. .

4. Cold War.  Officer Ray's faction ties up Sun and tells her to approach the mansion, yelling "Please let me in.  I'm a girl!"  Another faction shows up, and everybody fights.  Everybody dies except for Officer Ray, Sun, Anna, Rose, and a guy who says he'll help them find an airplane and fly to safety.

5. White Horse.  The injured Spears, in the woods, meets...another guy!  Wait -- I thought men only met women in this world.   "The name is Braithewaite (Bechir Sylvain).  I know you." "Are we dead?"  "I don't think so.  Anyway, I got a place in the woods we can go to."

After initial misgivings, Spears decides to trust him.  On the way, they see a mysterious person on a pale horse.  Must be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the Pale Horse represents death.  

They build a fire,  talk, fight, fight zombies, take refuge in a crazy guy's house, kill the crazy guy for his supplies.  Eventually Spears remembers that, back in the hood, he killed Braithewaite.  Or thought he did -- two bullets weren't enough.  Braithewaite sees the pale horse again, just as Spears prepares to finish the job. Boo!  The only two guys together in the whole series, and they're enemies!

6. Currency.  Mance's group -- two guys, two girls, of course -- rush through the snowy woods to a cache of supplies parachuted down from an airplane.  Sam, who has a previous claim, suggest that they work together to drag it out of the valley, then split it equally.  Ray's group shows up, and everybody fights over the cache and dies.

IMDB lists only the main cast, and the episode credits just lists "guest cast" without telling which actor played which character, so I can't track down any more beefcake photos.

7. The Lodge.  Rose, Anna, and Boone,  the man who offered to  guide them to the airplane find a mountain resort that has electricity, heat, food -- hot water for showers!  No zombies, and it hasn't been trashed.  Too good to be true. Spears joins them.  They have dinner, glaring at each other suspiciously.  

While Rose is in the kitchen, making a cake for dessert, she hears gunshots.  Anna has killed Spears.  She explains that he was infected, and about to turn.  Boo!  Bury your hunks!

8. The Plane.  Rose and Anna, Ray's group,  and Mance's group all converge on an airplane hanger.  A plane lands to rescue them.  Of course, it doesn't work out that way.  Everybody attacks each other, dies, gets zombified, and attacks each other some more, until no one makes it onto the plane except for Sun, who speaks only Korean.  Hey, the pilot speaks Korean!  Uh-oh, this is too good to be true.  She's dead, right?

Beefcake: No.

Gay Characters: No.

Gay Subtexts: No.  I thought Braithewaite and Spears would have one, but no.

Everybody dies: Yes.

My Grade: F