Joel Kinnaman Says James Gunn’s ‘The Suicide Squad’ Is ‘Insane’

Joel Kinnaman spoke with Variety about his role in HBO’s revival of “In Treatment”, and also came to the defence of one of his past projects, the much-maligned “Suicide Squad”.

With the concept now being rebooted by “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn, Kinnaman told Variety he’s seen the 2021 version.

“We saw it a couple days ago. It’s insane. It’s by far James Gunn’s best movie,” declared Kinnaman, who’s reprising the role of Rick Flag in the new “The Suicide Squad”, one of the few actors in the first movie to be invited back for the second.

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“It just takes it to another level,” Kinnaman said of the new film. “It’s an insane film. At the same time, it was very much the movie that I thought it was going to be because the vision was so clear from the beginning. While we were shooting it, it was so clear what we were doing. It’s so entertaining. I’m of course hopelessly biased, but I found it to be one of the most entertaining films I’ve ever seen. From A to Z, it’s so well paced, it has such a drive and such comedic timing. It’s funny along the way the whole time, effortlessly. But then I think what really surprised me was I was struck by was how well it flowed, but also how he was able to create these little bubbles, these little moments of emotional depth and visual and emotional poetry. And I felt like it really transcended the genre, and it became something bigger. And then it’s also very silly, and ridiculous in many ways and super violent. Just gory almost at times. And it has shocking moments, but they are very comedic. At the end of the movie, it’s completely normal seeing this giant shark just standing gnawing on a person’s head, and some of the people just having a conversation next to it… When you’re one hour and 50 minutes into ‘Suicide Squad,’ that’s going to feel completely normal. It’s so irreverent.”

Kinnaman also addressed complaints about the 2016 “Suicide Squad”, which was lambasted by the critics (the film’s score on Rotten Tomatoes is an anemic 26 per cent).

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‘I thought the first 40 minutes of the film was f**king great, and then there were conflicting visions and it just didn’t end up being what we all hoped it was,” Kinnaman admitted.

“It didn’t feel like the movie that we hoped we were going to make, and this is something very different,” he said. “It’s just a different universe. It’s a James Gunn universe. It’s a very hilarious and depraved place.”