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Rick Flag

Suicide Squad
by yo go re

At last! Someone has found a way to cast a gigantic yawn in solid plastic!

Amanda Waller's second-in-command, Colonel Rick Flag is the best Tier One Shooter the armed forces has made, which makes him even more suspicious of a homegrown cannon like Deadshot. A military man through and through, Flag is in charge of keeping this disparate group in line.

Oh, of course he's a colonel. Rick Flag was never the most interesting character on the Suicide Squad, because it's hard to be interesting when you're a plain human standing among a bunch of supervillains. In the comics, the original Suicide Squad appeared in a war comic, only to later have their name adopted by the villains - thanks to the sliding timescale, the Rick Flag who led the soldiers was originally the one who led the villains, until, like Black Canary, DC switched it to a parent/child relationship.

In the movie, Rick Flag is played by Joel Kinnaman, best known for not being well known. Oh hey, he was the scrawny dirtbag on The Killing! Yes, he was also in the new Robocop, but a TV series that had to be saved by Netflix has a higher viewership than that. The likeness is... non-existent? Even knowing who it's supposed to look like, it looks like a generic face.

But that might work in the figure's favor. What have we called him so far? Generic, never the most interesting, and plain. So if you buy this toy, it doesn't have to be Rick Flag, character from Suicide Squad: it can be "background filler soldier" helping Captain America fight against AIM; it can be whatever you want, because there's really nothing saying it isn't.

Flag's defining feature in the comics was that he wore a yellow shirt. This figure sort of honors that, by dressing him in a tannish mustard-colored top. The sleeves are rolled up to his forearms, and he's wearing black fingerless gloves. His (bulletproof?) vest is a separate piece, but non-removable. His green-grey cargo pants are cinches around the ankles of his grey boots, rather than being tucked into them. He has a tactical belt with all sorts of ammo clips and a radio, and all the wrinkles on his clothes have been done nicely. Like we said, an excellent nameless soldier toy.

The toy moves with a balljointed head that's barely a swivel, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, hinged elbows, swivel forearms and wrists, a hinged torso, swivel waist, H-hips, swivel thighs, hinged knees, and hinged ankles. Having swivels at both the wrist and elbow is redundant, and does nothing to make the toy better. But at least all his joints can move, which is more than we've been able to say so far for the other figures.

Flag doesn't come with a piece of the Killer Croc Build-A-Figure, because he's a Walmart exclusive. Instead, he sports an entire arsenal of weapons! He comes with a Glock 17 pistol, a customized HK416, a large grenade launcher and a knife. The knife can be stored in a notch on his vest, and there's a holster for the pistol on his belt, but the other two weapons he'll just have to hold.

Unfortunately, Mattel's inexperience with making quality toys really shows through here. None of the guns have hollows for the triggers, which may be for the best anyway, since neither of his hands are sculpted with the trigger finger extended. Way to go, Matty! At least the detail is pretty crisp.

Rick Flag isn't a very exciting figure, but with all his weapons and the fact that there's nothing special about him, you may want to get him just to be a scene-filler among your more dynamic characters.

-- 08/04/16


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