“Birds of Prey”: A Fantabulous 109 Minutes at the Movies
By Skyler King
Strap on your roller skates and get ready for the chaotic, violent and heartfelt journey to Harley Quinn’s independence.
As a somewhat sequel to “Suicide Squad,” “Birds of Prey” does a good job with tying into that universe and still focusing on expanding Harley’s story and her character. She is impulsive, yet smart. She starts out a little selfish but by the end she becomes selfless in true hero fashion. It is an enjoyable film and a great way to showcase Harley Quinn’s abilities along with a relatable theme of female independence.
“Birds of Prey” (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn) was directed by Cathy Yan and stars Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. The film follows a newly single Harley Quinn as she tries to gain independence in a life without Joker. Along the way she meets other women also in need of breaking ties with the men holding them back. Together they strive to protect a young girl from the film’s villain, Black Mask played by Ewan McGregor.
Right off the bat the film starts with opening narration in true Harley Quinn style — vulgar, colorful and comical. Over the years DC has been reformulating the movies for their popular heroes. Instead of making films for the sole purpose of creating a connected universe, they are now shifting towards making films focused on telling the hero’s story in the hero’s way.
“Birds of Prey” does this excellently, as the films screams Harley Quinn from start to finish. It did feel a little “Deadpool” at times with the fourth wall breaking and profanity, but it still felt very true to Harley.
There are hilarious on-screen title cards to explain how she has wronged her enemies. One of the reasons is because she voted for Bernie Sanders, which would probably mean most of the young generation would be enemies too.
The fight scenes in this film are unique and really energetic. In the first act of the film, Harley Quinn breaks into a police station using glitter and smoke bombs, and beats up Roman’s henchmen with a bat. You can’t get more Harley Quinn than that.
The third act fight scene takes place in an abandoned theme park. This isn’t new but it livened up the end of the film and we finally got to see some great girl power, which is always fun. We also saw Black Canary, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, use her powers for the first time.
Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn was great in this film, she’s been a fan favorite for the role bringing the perfect amount of wildness and vulnerability to the character. There’s a real growth in Harley from when we last saw her in “Suicide Squad” thanks to Robbie’s performance.
Ewan McGregor also gives a great performance as Black Mask/Roman Sionis. McGregor goes all out with the character making him cartoonish and over the top then menacing when he needs to be. The scene where he showed off his mask collection was entertaining to watch and earned a lot of laughs.
There is a trigger warning for sexual assault in one scene with Roman towards the third act of the film.
Other standout performances include Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays Huntress. The bit with her practicing what she’d say to her victims in front of the mirror made the audience crack up. Who can blame her, we’ve all had our own self pep talks in the mirror and sometimes they actually help.
Some places where the film lacked was the character of Black Mask. We see more Roman than Black Mask. His reveal made it sound like we should have seen more of him in action, but instead we got one scene of Black Mask and he spent most of it talking with no action.
Some jokes did fall flat and Detective Montoya’s plot line was weak. All the girls had a very dark backstory that leads them to where they are in the film while Montoya’s backstory is that her boss is terrible and takes credit for her work.
The film also did a good job with LGBT representation with Harley Quinn and Detective Montoya. It didn’t feel forced and fit well with the overall storyline adding more depth to their characters.
Overall, “Birds of Prey” was a very fun film, Harley Quinn had a clear arc of independence that ended in a satisfying way, tying up all loose ends with a shocking and explosive conclusion.
Showing at: AMC Theatres & Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
Rated: R
Rating:
4/5
