Review: 'The Suicide Squad' lets director James Gunn run DC villains through a bloody and happily nihilistic action ride

Writer-director James Gunn applies a simple, but largely effective, storytelling technique to his foray into DC Comics’ villain-worship, “The Suicide Squad”: Throw everything up on the wall and see what sticks.

What sticks is comical amounts of blood and guts, an eager sacrifice of some major characters from the first movie, and a devil-may-care attitude to plot structure, character development and good taste. In other words, Gunn — who cut his teeth working for the cheap-and-dirty schlock indie studio Troma — has finally made a Troma movie on a big Hollywood budget.

If you recall the first “Suicide Squad” movie, nominally directed by David Ayer but taken out of his hands during post-production, we’re following a bunch of DC’s nastiest villains running black-ops missions for the government. The squad’s creator, the hard-as-nails Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), offers these baddies an opportunity: Work for her and get 10 years taken off your prison sentence, and if one of them goes rogue, she’ll detonate the explosive implanted in their brain.

In the opening of the new movie, Gunn starts with an odd assemblage of characters, some new to us and some returning. The most familiar faces are the psychotic crime queen Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and the Australian assassin Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), along with the first squad’s old field commander, Col. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman).

Soon, and for reasons I won’t spoil here, the action shifts to a different crew. The commander on the ground is Dubois, aka Bloodsport (Idris Elba), an assassin with an array of weapons and lethal skill using all of them. Also on his mission: The equally lethal marksman Peacemaker (John Cena); Cleo Cazzo, alias Ratcatcher 2 (Portuguese actress Daniela Melchior), who can control rats to do her bidding; King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), a gigantic shark-man; and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), who shoots polka dots — no, really — and has mother issues. Eventually, Harley and Flag join this team on their mission.

The mission, by the way, is to sneak into a South American island nation where two generals (Juan Diego Botto, Joaquín Cosio) have recently overthrown the ruling family — and are threatening to deploy something called Project Starfish. Waller’s orders are to destroy the former Nazi base where Starfish is happening, and all evidence of its existence. That may include the evil mastermind behind the project, Gaius Grieves, aka The Thinker (played by former “Doctor Who” star Peter Capaldi).

Gunn, gleefully deploying levels of violence he’s not allowed to use in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies for Marvel, keeps the story nicely off balance, mostly by leaving viewers guessing whether some characters are good guys or bad guys. That works best with Harley Quinn, mostly because Robbie puts such a cheery attitude to her carnage. But it’s a trick Gunn overplays here — though he takes the gamble that his audience will be having too much fun with the over-the-top mayhem to care.

The result is big, bruising fun in the viewing, but there’s a bit of a hangover when you think back on it. For all of Gunn’s splatter-centered action, it never really builds to anything — because with few exceptions, like Dubois’ estranged daughter (Storm Reid) or Melchior’s melancholy Ratcatcher, there’s no emotional investment. The problem with having nothing really matter in “The Suicide Squad” is that nothing really matters.

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‘The Suicide Squad’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 6, in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. Rated R for strong violence and gore, language throughout, some sexual references, drug use and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 132 minutes.