Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
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Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (more)
Directed by:
Cathy YanScreenplay:
Christina HodsonCinematography:
Matthew LibatiqueComposer:
Daniel PembertonCast:
Margot Robbie, Rosie Perez, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett, Ewan McGregor, Ella Jay Basco, Chris Messina, Daniel Bernhardt, Charlene Amoia (more)VOD (3)
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You ever hear the one about the cop, the songbird, the psycho and the mafia princess? Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is a twisted tale told by Harley herself, as only Harley can tell it. When Gotham’s most nefariously narcissistic villain, Roman Sionis, and his zealous right-hand, Zsasz, put a target on a young girl named Cass, the city is turned upside down looking for her. Harley, Huntress, Black Canary and Renee Montoya’s paths collide, and the unlikely foursome have no choice but to team up to take Roman down. (Warner Bros. US)
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Reviews (22)
If there's anyone in the American film industry who is irresistible, it's Margot. I don't care if Harley Quinn has a strong enough story or personality to pull off her own movie, because Margot Robbie does. And her Harley is damn watchable, cool enough, and cute to boot. Plus, she's not exactly on her own. In comic book movies, it's always the same script anyway, good guys versus bad guys, backstory, big final brawl, boom, ending, promise of a sequel. Whether any comes about in this case, I have no idea. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, I'm happy with the cast, the editing was great, the music suited me. They’re weaker ones, but there are five of them. Stars, I mean.
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Ignore it. Birds of Prey wants to be an edgy, perhaps even controversial film full of gritty and dark humour, bold directorial choices, strong characters and uncompromising atmosphere. But for that to work, the film would have to be made by someone more skilled than Cathy Yan, who gives it a pretty interesting visual look, but has absolutely no idea how to work with the characters and how to build relationships between them. And given that this is pretty much what Birds of Prey is supposed to be about, it's quite a problem. But she may also be a problem in that when Harley goes solo, she turns out not to be a very interesting character. This team-up wants to be something like Deadpool, but the the tough girls of Gotham can’t even hold a candle to the verbose mercenary. They're still good in the action scenes, but once they start talking and building relationships, it becomes apparent how boring these heroines are and how all that toughness and grit only works on paper. Behind the R-rating and the wild colours, there is a film can’t hide the fact that it has no ideas and is boring most of the time.
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I really don’t know if Birds of Prey wants to be a "sharp, even controversial film” or anything else, but I enjoyed it for what it really is – a fresh, uncomplicated, deliberately trashy-in-places, playfully over-the-top and infantile post-breakup action comedy with an intentionally chaotic narrative that, like the main protagonist, gradually settles down and becomes more focused. Girl power is not so obviously on display as in Wonder Woman or certain Marvel movies (e.g. the painfully forced and TERRIBLY unnecessary “don’t say that name” scene in Avengers: Endgame). Feminism is a natural part of the fictional world. All of the men are malicious betrayers or dangerous, violent swine (which, however, does not mean that the heroines are saintly, not even a little – they are imperfect, but they don’t care) and we want them to die a horrible death. This film is based more on female friendship than on the antagonism between Harley Quinn and Sionis, which in the end is rather just a MacGuffin contributing to “female bonding”, an obstacle preventing the protagonist from enjoying an egg sandwich or watching Tweety in peace. This is where Birds of Prey differs from standard comics-based films, where a villain must be eliminated in order for the world to be saved. I surely would not mind if there was greater anarchy and more derisive mockery of all of the macho comic-book universes in which women serve merely as sidekicks, baddies and ornaments in guy adventures, but Birds of Prey is too radically feminist (er, lol) for some viewers, so for now it’s perhaps not possible to expect more from a major-studio genre film. 75%
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Birds of Prey turned out tragically financially, and the movie itself is nothing to write home about. I may be one of the few who liked Suicide Squad, but this spin off with Harley Quinn was too feminist and girly for me and it irritated me for almost the entire running time. There's a difference between listening to the dialogue of a group of tough mercenaries versus a group of women, where the humor doesn't come across as funny at all, at times I was almost embarrassed. What elevates the film to the average is the nice color comic book visuals and decent over-the-top action, but I hardly noticed any violence apart from a few nice fractures. Compared to Deadpool, where guts and brains were flying in all directions, this was very tame, and Ewan McGregor as the villain overacted too much for my taste. Somewhere around 20 minutes before the end I was wishing for the ending and that's always a bad sign. It's okay for one viewing thanks to Harley Quinn and the decent action, but there wasn’t anything else I enjoyed. PS: Jurnee Smollett-Bell in gold leggings, however, was not to be missed! 5/10.
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The proclamation of girl power and kicking someone in the balls are not the problems of the film at all. In my opinion, there could be more of them in an ideal world and they could hit elsewhere than the obvious targets, such as ruined demented sidekicks and a generic villain (does Gotham really need another sadistic mobster with daddy complexes?). Harley is a guide. Narratively and self-reflexively, the film copies Deadpool, including unreliable detours and chaotic bloopers. Unfortunately, before the film gets going in any direction, these moments of "let's start again" slow down the pace considerably. The film is accompanied by cheeky and imaginative choreographies by Chad Stahelský, in which there is more sparkle and playfulness than in the entire screenplay by Christina Hodson. He has trouble telling a trivial story with a hint of tension and turning photogenic emancipation figurines into characters. The impression that the DC universe suffers from a brutal fragmentation of personality is not helped by this tolerable and completely useless film. When it comes to Batman ... girls, damn it, I don't even know who this is about. But it doesn't matter. Let’s paint our nails, have margarita and feel satisfied that the straw-men got kicked in the balls.
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