The Suicide Squad

Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn, and joins a reformed Task Force X with a new assortment of supervillains from the Belle Reve prison facility. Commonly known as the Suicide Squad due to the explosive tracking devices they’ve all been implanted with to monitor their location, listen in, and blow them up if they do anything off-mission! Dropped off in the South American Island of Malta Cortese, their mission is to destroy ‘Project Starfish’ - an extra-terrestrial capable of controlling the minds of every human on the planet. For years, The Thinker (Peter Capaldi) has been experimenting with prisoners to turn the alien into a large-scale weapon that can be controlled, and he’s now close to perfecting it…

Defying convention right from the start (spoilers!), The Suicide Squad feels smart and inventive. Unfettered by the 12A rating of Guardians of the Galaxy, director James Gunn unleashes his bloodthirsty side, and ups the violence to match its comic book origins. However, he maintains the level of playfulness seen in the Guardians films, which shows just how much he (and presumably everyone else in the cast) enjoyed making this. Margot Robbie and Idris Elba are the standouts, though everyone else is on form. The funniest superhero film since Deadpool.

Gail Marshall