Time had not been kind to the Little Rascals.

Who in the heck is the Suicide Squad and why should you care? These are both pertinent and valid questions.

‘Suicide Squad’ aka ‘Task Force X’ aka ‘You Naughty Little Rascals’* (*may not be a real thing) is DC’s (think Batman, Superman, Flash) answer to the Justice League or Marvel’s Avengers or Old People’s, The Expendables.

A veritable rogues gallery of less-than-willing super villains offered a chance at reducing (or escaping) their confines by taking part in government sanctioned, black ops missions whose odds of success are, as the squad’s name suggests, less than amazing.

Written & directed by David Ayer (Training Day, Fury) 2016’s Suicide Squad will be the 3^rd of 11 DC Comics’ Shared Universe Films and will act as the precursor to DC’s Justice League; Part 1 scheduled for release in November, 2017.

So who are these aforementioned scoundrels and who’s going to be playing them? We take a look (from left)

• Character: Slipknot
• Abilities: Can secure a trailer safely with his rope and knot tying skills. Oh. And kill you and junk.
• Actor:  Adam Beach
• You might know him from: The go to Native American Actor for, like, everything. Clint Eastwoods Flags of Our fathers or Windtalkers with Nicolas Cage.
• What to expect: Beach will bring a deep, spiritual, softly spoken performance as the villain with a penchant for restraints. We’re thinking Christian Grey; 50 Shades of Dead.
• Fun Fact: The nu-metal band from Iowa, Slipknot also has 9 members and also contains a clown. Coincidence? Yes, of course. Don’t be ridiculous.

• Character: Captain Boomerang
• Abilities: Can play ‘catch’ with himself.
• Actor: Jai Courtney
• You might know him as: Yippee Ki Yay, Motherfucker Jr in A Good Day to Die Hard opposite Bruce Willis or Kyle Reese in the upcoming, Terminator Genisys.
• 
  What to expect: If those mutton chops are anything to go by we’re looking at an ostentatious performance full of off colour “down under” jokes. We hope. Austin Powers meets Wolf Creek’s, Mick. Yeah, baby, huhhuhunhun!
• Fun Fact: Courtney trained at the same acting school as yours truly. Unlike Captain Boomerang, they didn’t want me to come back. (enter sad face here)

• Character: Katana
• Abilities: Like Tom Crusie in The Last Samurai. But actually Japanese. And a woman.
• Actor: Karen Fukuhara
• You might know her from: The picture above.
• What to expect: Samurai sensibility culture clash with the squad’s own methods & behaviour. We’ve seen the strong, silent, samurai type done so many times. Something new would be refreshing.
• Fun Fact: Armed with Soultaker, a sword that captures the souls of her victims and allows her to talk with them. That’s fun, right?

Character: Enchantress
Abilities: Muggle-born Witch, best friend to Harry & Ron. Wait, that’s not right. Magic.
Actor: Cara Delevingne
You might know her from: The fashion catwalks of London or Ole’ Pari’ or the upcoming film adaptation of young adult novel, Paper Towns.
What to expect: With a tomboyish quality and piercing eyes expect some resistance and distrust toward the swamp thing as the character’s Jekyl and Hyde persona of June Moone / Enchantress vie for control.
Fun Fact: Those are her real eyebrows.

Character: Rick Flag
Abilities: Having a kick ass name.
Actor: Joel Kinnaman
You might know him from: TV’s The Killing & the 2014 RoboCop reboot.
What to expect: The reluctant leader of the squad who already looks like he doesn’t want to be there. Kinda like everyone in RoboCop reboot. Zing! Hard man with a conscience yadayadayada Has his work cut out for him if he’s to keep this rag-tag bunch in line.
Fun Fact: Kinnaman was shortlisted to play Mad Max but lost out to Tom Hardy who was originally cast as Rick Flag but dropped out and was replaced by Kinnaman. Whaaaaat?!

Character: Harley Quinn
Abilities: Betty Boop with a baseball bat.  
Actor: Margot Robbie
You might know her from: The Wolf of Wall Street, Focus, Neighbours (TV).
What to expect: Big things from this girl as the Jokers love interest. After Wolf of Wall Street and the solid Focus Margot is on the verge of stardom and is going to swing for the fences (cuz she has a baseball bat) and make some bold choices in her effort to join Hollywood’s elite.
Fun Fact: A Harlequin is the name of a mischievous character that originated in the commedia dell’arte – you know what, never mind, she looked great in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Character: Deadshot
Abilities: He’s a deadeye dick with the guns.
Actor: Will “Big Willie Style” Smith
You might know him from: MIB, Bad Boys, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
What to expect: Smith’s star has fallen somewhat with his recent endeavours missing the mark. Not known for playing second fiddle, Smith will be at the (dead)centre of this film no doubt banging heads with the squad’s leader, Kinnaman’s Rick Flag. We hope we get more, Mike Lowrey (Bad Boys) and less Cypher Raige (After Earth).
Fun Fact: Worked with Harley Quinn’s Margot Robbie in the 2015 thriller, Focus.  Oddly, though, not a prequel.

Character: Killer Croc
Abilities: Looks great in/as boots. Is basically a big crocodile.
Actor: Adewale Akinnyoye-Agbaje
You might know him from: Mr Eko from Lost or Kurse from Thor: The Dark World
What to expect: Broody, intense, unpredictable and a little snappy. (geddit) The fact that he’s wearing a hoodie suggests he’s none too happy about his appearance / condition and may be the brunt of the squads jokes a la Beast / The Thing / Mark Zuckerberg.
Fun Fact: No stranger to the comic book genre, Adewale played Kurse in Marvel’s Thor and was circling to play the Black Panther which will now be played by Chadwick Boseman due for release in 2018

Character: El Diablo / Chato Santana
Abilities: Originally fashioned as Zorro with a dash of demonic possession. Ole’  Now, sadly, a heavily tattooed, Latino gang member with a proclivity for pyromancy.
Actor: Jay Hernandez
You might know him from: Hostel / Crazy/Beautiful
What to expect: Hot-blooded rebel and a bit of a bully. I don’t know why. I think it’s the jacket.
Fun Fact: El Diablo is ‘The Devil’ in Spanish. El Taco is Mexican – and means ‘delicious.’

So there you have it, a brief look at Task Force X. Granted there are some notable absentees in Viola Davis’s (TV’s How To Get Away With Murder) Amanda Waller (= Nick Fury) and Jared Leto’s (Dallas Buyers Club, 30 Seconds to Mars) Joker but we all know he doesn’t play well with others.

It’s very intriguing how/if this movie is going to work. It will be a breath of fresh air having the perspective of the bad guys but what happens when that novelty wears off? The real trick is going to be putting a bunch of assholes together for 90 minutes and making us give a damn. Having said that, Ayer did it with Training Day and he did it with Fury. Can he do it again with the Suicide Squad? Slated for release August, 5^th 2016 – we’ll see.

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The first and last moments you see Paul Walker on screen are both warm and poignant and the most recent release of the much beloved Fast & Furious franchise is a fitting tribute to the late actor’s legacy.

Furious 7, Furious Seven, Fast & Furious 7, whatever colour you paint it, is a film that seeks to outdo itself at every turn and delivers in souped-up spades.

In capable hands with writer Chris Morgan (Tokyo Drift, 2009’s Fast & Furious, Fast Five & Furious 6), and directed by Australian, James Wan (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring) the Horror director who at first seems an odd choice until you realise the commercial success he’s had with his own billion dollar franchises.

This time around we see the big bad brother of the hospitalised F6 villain, Deckard Shaw (Statham) out for revenge against our merry band of street racing, anti-heroes. Diesel is back producing and staring as the gruff alpha, Domenic Toretto and say what you like about the testosterone filled tank top, he may be one note but geez it’s a good one. Walker, always watchable, returns as Brian O’Conner who is struggling to adjust to family life and yearns once again for the thrill of the chase. Rodriguez & Brewster are back, Brewster literally relegated to babysitting duty and in an attempt to flesh out the male dominated cast and perhaps inject some fresh blood into the series, Nathalie Emmanuel enters as hacker Megan Ramsey who you can see a lot more of in TV’s Game of Thrones. Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges takes a front seat in this one but is given more of an expository role in an effort to explain the plot’s high-concept technobabble and Tyrese Gibson is at his motor-mouth best as Roman Pearce. Kurt Russel adds a bit of class as the spec ops suit while Jason Statham is menacing and terminator like in his persistence as the inexorable, Deckard Shaw.

Dwayne “I used to wrestle” Johnson gets by on his affable charm and seems to have the mantle of one liners in his sites with lines like, “Woman, I am the cavalry.” In lesser hands it could come across as patronising and chauvinistic. Shakespeare, tis not.  Djimon “Where is the diamond?” Hounsou and Ong Bak’s Tony Jaa round out the rogues gallery but are rather one dimensional characters (is there another kind) the latter donning an evil moustache to become Walker’s nemesis in an East meets West duel that allows for some interesting and thrilling fights.

Doth Mother know you weareth her chain-gun?

The plot is somewhat convoluted and redundant but when has that ever stopped the Fast & Furious? There are some daytime television moments of melodrama that clunk by but that has never been what the Fast & Furious does well. What it does do well is give us cars, fist fights, gyrating bodies, shootouts, exotic locations and over-the-top action sequences. We travel across the globe at breakneck speeds to an adrenaline inducing soundtrack featuring Iggy Azalea (keep an eye out for the cameo) & Wiz Khalifa (so hot right now). There are cars jumping out of planes, cars jumping down the sides of mountains, cars jumping out of buildings and cars jumping out at helicopters. Who says cars can’t fly? Bullets, bodies, cars fly every-which-way as each new set piece seeks to out do the last and as I guiltily watched while my logical brain called bullshit I couldn’t help but wonder and get excited as to where the series would take me next. I for one will be looking forward to the next film in the franchise, Fast and Furious Infinite: Furious In Space, where you live your life a quarter light-year at a time.

Hey, we can dream.

Stunts, gyrating booties and hopefully pondering aside, in terms of being a well-made movie, it can sometimes suffer from the 2Fast, 2Much syndrome but Wan covers the action well enough to not jolt you from the experience. That being said, it’s quite a marvel that considering the obstacles they had to overcome to complete the final reel, both emotionally and technologically, it’s quite an achievement.

Whether this is the end of such a beloved, fan franchise or a set up for the next instalment, it is a pitch perfect way that allows the fans to say farewell to the blue-eyed boy with the 900 horsepower smile whose down to earth charisma and charm was what helped us all fall in love with franchise in the first place.

Dear heavenly spirit, thank you for providing us with the direct-port nitrous injection, four-core intercoolers, ball-bearing turbos and titanium valve springs…and thanks for Paul Walker.

2.5 tuna sandwiches on white, no crust. (Add another if you’re a fan)

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