THE FIRST TAKE
A Film Fitting Its Lead: The Chaotic Carnival that is ‘Birds of Prey’
Messy, frustrating, but bloodily entertaining, few films reflect their lead characters more acutely than DC’s latest.
(This review is spoiler-free)
Jesse Eisberg wrote a short story for The New Yorker in 2015 that I think about not infrequently; most recently, as I walked into a screening of Birds of Prey. Unambiguously titled ‘An Honest Film Review’, this witty satirical tale opens with the line:
“This week, I’m reviewing “Paintings of Cole,” which I didn’t like, because the press screening was all the way uptown, and there were huge delays on the J train.”
and continues to describe the day’s various occurrences that put my fictitious peer in such an unfavourable mood.
Contrary to the popular perception of this profession, film critics don’t attempt to be the sole authority on film, and nor are our opinions primarily informed by social and demographic group — at least, not for those worth reading, who fulfil the obligations of the medium. Sycophants and the stubbornly cynical alike do a disservice; at our best, critics truly love film and want to give as fair and balanced an appraisal of the workings, triumphs, and failures of a film as possible, because we truly love and care about the medium.
And yet, I could not help but feel unenthused about BIRDS OF PREY (OR THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF HARLEY QUINN): or the blandly corporate ‘Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey’, after some cinemas desperately rebranded it from its quirkily offputting title. Trailers not having sold me — nor most of the public if its underwhelming weekend box office was anything to go by — the marketing department didn’t do it any favours by emphasising nothing but it’s all-female writing, directing, producing, and catering¹. And nor did those who advocated for it, who similarly hammered down on this. Some theorised men were put off by this all-female cast; others, by Robbie’s (apparent) desexualisation. Uniformly, little was said about the quality of the film and all, blaming the low turnout of men, ignored the box-office statistics revealing its audience was 53% male. And all of this doesn’t mention that it comes from a fundamentally uninspired place, being four-year-later spin-off sequel to a bad film, Suicide Squad. For those who didn’t see it, this title accurately described the mindset of sane audiences that did. Hardly encouraging.
A third into Birds of Prey, I feared my initial biases were validated. Opening the film, stylistically subtitled voice-over jumps into scribbled, animated flashbacks, and then the story begins and then backtracks, and then begins again, maybe, and shows a different character, and then Quinn, maybe later? By taking a messily non-linear structure and framing it from the perspective of a zany insane lead, the director and writer have made the most effective way for an audience to have no faith in the story or their ability tell it. Having fed someone to Harley’s pet hyena Bruce and thrown a tray of cocktails to the pavement after she overhears her ‘girlfriends’ talking behind her back, the scattered elements eventually fall into the shape of a simple but workable action plot; to retrieve a diamond and a city worth of mercenaries looking to prevent Harley from doing so. Plus start a superheroine vigilante group as an aside. But until this story emerges from the sea of clutter, it is an opening less encouraging than it’s predecessor.
And yet, opening the second act is the anchor that stabilizes this plot and narrative; unexpectedly, one of the most viscerally entertaining action scenes in years. A fun, sweary, glitter bomb of blood and broken joints, Harley fights her way through the corridors of a police station and its incompetent officers with a combination of colourful non-lethal ammunition and swinging legs, and it’s a fight that combines elegant choreography, physical locations, and reasonably edited wide shots to make a more skilful, fun piece of action filmmaking than anything from the MCU, whose combat is as flat as its colour grading. Weaving from room to room, the locations are tight, dense, and varied, and combatants differing in number, size, and fighting. Rather being than a drawn-out brawl against waves of cannon fodder, it’s a string of entertaining, diverse set-pieces that a varied soundtrack provides the thumping beat for. Later in the film, a roller-skating fight ups this for originality, spacial clarity, and tension, if not quite entertainment, with Quinn trying to dodge incoming fire from her enemies in a Mercedes Benz and Rolls Royce. These are ecstatic scenes — the kinds of creatively choreographed violence you rarely find in mainstream Western action films and never in superhero films — and small details like a thrown hair tie in a larger fight give the combat character and an air of kick-ass confidence. It’s combat with it’s own, distinct character — not the balletic savage lightness of contemporary East Asian martial arts films (most notably, The Raid and IP Man series’), nor the pounding, slugging hand to hand of Brawl in Cell Block 99, but something special somewhere in-between. To be clear, Birds of Prey doesn’t have combat quite in the same league of these examples, and later fights (particularly the finale) lose tension and spacial clarity in their overly cluttered, wide spaces. But it’s high praise that the action in a disposable superhero film can be reasonably considered in conversation with them.
Another highlight is fabulous villain Ronan Sionis — otherwise called Black Mask — played with charming offhand camp by Ewan McGregor. A powerful gangster within Gotham, he is as fickle, over-reactive, and wanton for brutality as he is fantastically dressed. From his eclectically adorned penthouse, he operates his empire with his buzz cut, scarred second in command Victor Zsasz always at his back — often massaging Sionis to calm him down. McGregor plays him as spoilt and vindictive, unable to outlive his lack of childhood attention, lashing out at those who wrong him and giddy at the things that excite him. In the films best shot, he leans back in a leather chair with a small artisan bowl of popcorn, giddy in anticipation of the show he’s about to watch — the torturous execution of a foe, at the hands of his razor-wielding lover Zsasz, who has a penchant for removing faces. At one point, on hearing about the murder of his men by a crossbow-wielding assailant, he says with the anger and confusion of a boy deprived a plaything;
“Why don’t I own the crossbow killer? I like crossbows!”
For a film with such a bubbly personality, the moments involving Sionis have a dark savagery as shocking as it is villainously satisfying. A family is strung up by their feet, and having carved off the father's face and dropped the flopped skin in front of his soon to be peeled wife, Zsasz moves to their adult daughter. She pleads, and he and Sionis decide to let her go. But looking down at the girls face, Sionis notices a repulsive snot bubble emerging from the blubbering girl’s nose. Pulling back, face contorted in disgust, he walks away, day ruined, telling Zsasz to just kill her. He’s Milo Yiannopoulos without the politics, and fabulously fun to watch.
Though, despite clearly being lovers, Zsasz and Sionis are never shown having any sexual interaction. Diversity of sex on screen is not something I particularly care about — what we should long for is better films, regardless of the characters shown or people making them. But it is exactly for this reason that the lack of gay sex between the two is a frustrating omission. By not embracing this, it’s less authentic to the spirit of both the characters and the film’s outrageous, out-there tone. It’s not like this was ever going to be a hit in China or the Arab world anyway; regardless of the amount of gay sex shown, those audiences were never going to flock to an R-rated action film about independent immoral women.
Disappointingly, no other element in Bird of Prey can be talked about in this manner. What about the stand out image teased in the trailers — the ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ sequence set in this club ? A visual cock-tease deflatingly revealed to be just another scattershot quick-cut montage dream sequence; so unfitting for a campy fun film where this kind of bold imagery could be used in a way that was still narratively and visually satisfying. Sucker Punch is the most notable example of that, and not only is it not a good Zack Snyder film, it’s also just not a good film.
Throughout Birds of Prey, little besides Sionis and the chief fight scenes exceed mildly entertaining mediocrity. The characters aren’t compelling, cinematography muddy and dull, and its generic plot never justifies its convoluted structure. Not only that but, when blended with the films ideological commitments, it leads to serious inconsistencies in the way the film handles tone and various characters.
Were Harley’s friendship and mentorship of a young pickpocket blended into its genre conceits in a coherent way — again, Sucker Punch — this plotline would be totally fine. But as it stands, this feels like an element stolen from other films, or addition from a rewrite; not a natural part of the story arc, as it tries to humanize Harley in a way that runs contrary to her character. Throughout, a long-running gag through the film about an egg sandwich is funny not just because of the dedication Robbie puts into it but also because it’s consistent with her character. It makes sense that Harley would have an almost fanatical, lascivious obsession with a sandwich. Her concern for the girl though? Quinn seems more likely to murder her as she sleeps to get any closer to that beloved egg sandwich. Turning around and acting otherwise just runs counter to her nature.
A similar inconsistency arises in Sionis because of the films’ forced political didacticism. Donning his titular black mask, he gathers an army of gangsters — all men — to take down the final women squad and delivers a man-power speech, ending in the line ‘let’s get these bitches!’. The flippant, twirling torturer from earlier would never say something so emphatic and ideological.
Pushing to portray contemporary #MeToo narratives, not only is there no sex between the two gay villains but it is a film that all positive sexuality has been raided from. And so, despite being fabulously, obviously, gay, the chief villain needs to be unconvincingly forced into being a sexual abuser of women because anything vaguely sexual always has to be corrupt or abusive.
This sexual ethos is betrayed in the title; of sexuality as carnivorous and exploitive; sexual relations, the abusive power of men making ‘prey’ of women; the dismissive female shorthand of ‘birds’ demonstrating it on a social level. Post the 60s Second-Wave feminist movement, modern Western societies have nurtured healthy acceptance of sexual freedom. But so self-obsessive, in the aftermath of Hollywood’s MeToo reckoning with its long but isolated history as a flesh trade, mainstream feminist film has veered into the puritanism and Marxism of radical feminism. Earlier this year, Hustlers shared this but its views were of the radical lesbian variety. It’s demonstrated horseshoe theory in the sexual realm, feminists banding together with the puritanical traditionalists, and as with the friendship element, is in total contradiction with the films overall aesthetic, and that of its lead.
And yet, regardless of its technical and aesthetic successes or failures, it is built on a fundamental misconception; that Harley Quinn is a leading character. She’s not, even with Margot Robbie lovingly playing her, and despite the film and it’s lead trying to distance themselves from her famous lover, The Joker is a gaping hole that the film tries to ignore but everyone watching can’t keep their eyes off. Similarly, she is technically paired with others — the titular Birds of Prey — but this is a film decidedly from her perspective, and what little time is spent with Songbird, Huntress and ‘generic cop lady’ only reinforces how dull and forgettable they are.²
Quinn is the indisputably the protagonist and misunderstanding her appeal, the filmmakers try to make her emphatic; to pass off her immorality as entertaining asides, with a Tarantino-esque amused amorality — and done against only bad people, and that’s all are behind her now anyway, so yeah, she’s a good person. But she’s not. She’s a hyper-spontaneous, giddy, submissive, murderous sociopath, and Harley Quinn the Misunderstood Mistreated Moralist doesn’t work. A Kill Bill meets Alice: Madness Returns approach could perhaps work for her, or embrace the genre stylings of its crime plot and tell this story as an ensemble race to get the diamond, but regardless, a disorganised layout per the zaniness of Quinn’s mind doesn’t work.
I cannot wait for this film to come out on Blu-ray. Then, I can skip forward and watch those two main action sequences again and McGregor’s campiest scenes. The dynamism of these elements shows how surprisingly great this film could have been. And yet these are isolated moments, with its potential squandered on forced ideology and aesthetic errors.
As it stands, there’s a lot in Birds of Prey vying for your attention. But there’s little deserving it.
Birds of Prey (or the Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by: Cathy Yan
Written by: Christina Hodson
Cinematographer: Matthew Libatique
Starring: Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Messina
¹ For legal clarity, Warner Bros has neither confirmed or denied it’s catering was mostly female; however, that of the films cast is likely primarily Hispanic.
² Her fervorous annoyance at nobody calling her Huntress despite her insistence is a well worn but still satisfying joke.
