‘The Suicide Squad’ Film Review: Margot Robbie and New Villains Face Certain Death With Quips

This review of “The Suicide Squad” was first published on July 28, 2021.

In the slender book entitled “Sequels That Improve Upon the Original,” in the chapter marked “Because They Hired Someone Who Better Understood the Tone,” you’ll find “The Suicide Squad,” a follow-up to 2016’s “Suicide Squad” that doubles down on what the first movie got right while learning from its predecessor’s mistakes.

I noted, in my review of “Suicide Squad,” that the film wanted desperately to follow in the footsteps of “Guardians of the Galaxy” as a film in which a group of thrown-together mismatched misfits overcome their mutual loathing and learn how to defeat a common enemy.