Suicide Squad is the next major film in which ne’er-do-wells are unambiguously presented as the heroes. They’re “bad” but you’re on their team, you identify with them, you want to them to succeed, you’ll feel bad if they don’t. The best of the genre, top of my head, in this order: The Wild Bunch, Bonnie and Clyde, Heat, One-Eyed Jacks, The Professionals, The Dirty Dozen, The Outfit, Tom Horn, etc. I’m not talking about intriguing, charismatic bad guys (Tom Cruise‘s “Vincent” in Collateral, Denzel Washington‘s dirty detective in Training Day) or half-flawed good guys but outside-the-law characters presented as the most compelling moral characters in the realm of the film.
