Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay

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Suicide Squad:  Hell to Pay – 4 out of 5

Task Force X’s time in the world outside of comic books has been mixed at best.  I liked how they were handled on Arrow, the first animated film was okay and the live-action adventure for the DCEU definitely has its problems but, overall, I will admit I enjoyed the feature.  Well, the Suicide Squad is back for another deadly mission in the DC animated universe with Hell to Pay and, despite some very noticeable hiccups, I definitely find this one to be a better mission than their first animated film.

"Okay, everyone just stand together for the promotional material...aaaaand
off you go on your suicide mission."

It's quite an achievement that DC made an animated
movie with Harley Quinn and didn't use the story to
get her naked or put most of her emphasis on sex.

Amanda Waller (Vanessa Williams) is diagnosed with a terminal illness and quickly assembles Task Force X.  Under the leadership of Deadshot (Christian Slater), she instructs the team to find a man by the name of Steel Maxum (Greg Grunberg) and retrieve a mysterious and mystical black card that he is in possession of.  Deadshot leads Bronze Tiger (Billy Brown), Killer Frost (Kristin Bauer van Straten), Copperhead (Gideon Emery), Captain Boomerang (Liam McIntyre) and Harley Quinn (Tara Strong), and together they set out to find this black card.  They soon learn that this card maybe Waller’s ticket to avoiding the darker aspects of the afterlife but they also discover that they aren’t the only one seeking the card as it seems that Zoom (C. Thomas Howell) is hot on their tails.

Running super fast apparently gives you a ridiculously small waist.

Hell to Pay hits all the things that DC’s animated films are doing right and only gives glancing blows to the things it habitually gets wrong…and then seems to lean into some new and awkward bad things that aren’t usually noticed in their films.  As a whole, however, the film is done fairly well and offers up a nice story that connects to one of DC’s best animated films and is able to balance that line of being dark and gritty without feeling like it is doing so in a transparent way of getting an R-rating.

Bronze Tiger is definitely one of the highlights of this film and Billy Brown voiced
the character excellently.

Seriously, Urbaniak's voice felt just right as Pyg.

Like most of DC’s animated library, Hell to Pay has a fantastic voice acting cast.  All the members of Task Force X are cast exceptionally well—I particularly liked Vanessa Williams as Waller and I really loved how badass Billy Brown made every line from Bronze Tiger feel.  I also felt that casting James Urbaniak as Professor Pyg is about as perfect casting as one can get.  I was also really happy to see that this was an R-rated animated feature that felt like the story warranted the rating and not the rating warranting the story—which happens too often with DC.  Finally, I really enjoyed how tight the story was and how nothing about it felt overstuffed or like it had a rushing plot.  Sadly, one thing that did disappoint me was some of its technical aspects, specifically when it concerns character animation and its use of integrating 2-D and 3-D animation.

I gotta say, I'm very surprised with you, DC.  You are being sexually gratuitous
with a male character for a change.  That's progress.  At least for you.

There’s a very distinct style to DC’s animated films.  It’s not a bad look but it is amazingly uniform and it results in character designs that all look painfully similar.  I’ve said before that it might be nice to see DC get a little more experimental and try out some new animated looks (why not?  There are different artists for all different comic books) but the real killer for the animation here is some truly awful 3-D animation and some awkward character animation.  There were many times, especially during action scenes, where characters weren’t moving in concert with the backgrounds and it made viewing a little jarring.  For example, the floor is moving slower than a character is walking and such.  However, the worst part was seeing 3-D animation that looked like it was lifted from the late-90s being integrated into the film.  There is no way around saying it but this 3-D animation just looked crummy and didn’t fit with the rest of the animated style.  It was incredibly distracting.

The still doesn't do it justice but those 3-D backgrounds didn't blend with the
2-D characters.

Even with its animation issues, Suicide Squad:  Hell to Pay delivers a compelling and exciting DC story.  The mature content and darker action never feels gratuitous like so many other DC animated features, the story is solid and flows well and the voice acting is exceptional.  Overall, though, the aspect I enjoyed the most was how this film so tightly connected to another film in the DC animated universe.  Essentially, all these films are connected in the same universe and they can often be seen continuing threads but they rarely ever reference one another as this one does and I really enjoyed that.