Alas, we have come to the end of our “Focus On – Viola Davis” series; farewell, Ms. Davis and thank you for making us laugh at love . . . again. Well, maybe not so much laugh as stare open-mouthed at your ability. And lest you think that Viola Davis only appears in gritty, serious, deeply moving films, this week’s entry proves that she really, really doesn’t. Directed by James Gunn, 2021’s “The Suicide Squad” is both a sequel and a sorta-kinda-maybe reboot of the 2016 original comic book movie, based on a concept that stretches back to 1959 but didn’t really come into its own until writer John Ostrander revived it and made it his own in the late 80’s. The comic deals with a black ops team made up of second- (often third- or fourth-) string super villains who are offered a reduced sentence in exchange for doing insanely dangerous, dare I say, “suicidal”, missions for The Government. Viola Davis plays the cold-hearted end-justifies-ANY-means head of the team Amanda “The Wall” Waller and she clearly demonstrates that she doesn’t need to plant a micro-explosive in someone’s head to get them to do what she wants. So, does this version surpass the rather messy, studio-meddled-with 2016 version? Do we end up rooting for the bad guys? Are we just happy that Viola Davis is part of a big-budget franchise (spoiler alert: we are!) Join us and find out!
Poll question: what’s your favorite cinematic car chase sequence?
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It is indeed the car chase from The Blues Brothers! Comedy is trickier than action, and this particular sequence merges both.
Thanks, Ned! It’s a popular one!
I am not really a car chase guy, but I really got into the Terminator 2 chase and the of road warrior. I don’t think the speeder chase in return of Jedi counts, but that was exciting even if it did end up in Ewoks.
Sorry… end of the road warrior. Autocorrect and dyslexia are not a great combination!
Thanks, Vince! You know what’s really interesting? Neither of the movies you mention were mentioned in any other comments, and they seem like really obvious ones. Ewoks automatically disqualify anything. 😀