Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was one of the brighter spots in the otherwise dreadful Suicide Squad movie, and given the character’s ongoing popularity, why not give her a solo movie? That seems to be the thinking behind the new Birds of Prey (Or the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)–I am not typing that full title out again–where Harley, now on her own, teams up with some other female characters and has an adventure in the mean streets of Gotham City.
Considering the most problematic aspects of Harley’s character is her abusive relationship with the Joker, showing a Harley on her own is only the right thing to do as she stops becoming a doormat and starts becoming something unpredictably worse for the male control freaks of the world.
Harley (Margot Robbie) and the Joker have broken up again, only this time she’s sure it’ll stick. The problem is no one believes her. Now, there is an advantage there in that as long as everyone believes Harley is still with her Mistah J, she’s essentially untouchable. But as Harley is tired of being mistaken for the Joker’s punching bag, she makes a big move so everyone will know she isn’t with him anymore. That means anyone with a grudge against her is no longer unwilling to let their personal grudges slide. And among the baddest of the bads is Roman “Black Mask” Sionis (Ewan McGregor), the unhinged disowned son of one of Gotham’s richest men, looking to get into running all the organized crime in the city.
But there’s more to Sionis’s grudge then just Harley. A teenage pickpocket named Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) swipes something Roman really wants, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it back. Factor in tough cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), lounge singer Dinah “Black Canary” Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and vengeful vigilante Helena “Huntress” Bertinelli (a very deadpan Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Harley might be able to keep the kid and herself alive, presuming Harley isn’t as terrible a person as even she thinks she might be.
Director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hodson made something that is mostly fun. Birds of Prey isn’t deep cinema, and maybe it doesn’t have to be. Coasting largely off Robbie’s rather effortless charm as Harley, in many ways this is a standard, well-done action movie. Harley, acting as narrator, doesn’t tell the most linear of stories, and she isn’t exactly a role model, but she isn’t pretending to be. She’s a young woman who may not be as bad as she thinks she is, but she’s hardly a saint.
But then there’s the bad guys with McGregor and Chris Messina as his sidekick Mr. Zsasz, and both of them make for some requisite awful people. MacGregor seems to be having some fun, and Messina comes across as a man who not only like his work but may also be in love with his boss. That said, neither seem to be as scary as the movie wants us to think they are.
Of special note was this movie’s version of Gotham City. It’s a bit crazy. Colorful in a Harley-approved sort of way, it also seems to combine traits from just about every cinematic version of the fictional city thus far. There’s some art deco stuff from the Burton/Schumacher era, some modern city stuff for the Nolan trilogy, a few run-down slum areas that could maybe be a somewhat cleaned up version of the recent Joker, and even the set for Sionis’s nightclub wouldn’t be too out of place if Adam West were doing the Batusia there. It gives the movie a distinctive look.
All that said, the movie is fine, a bit fun, but not much more than that. As I said, Robbie has a lot of charm, and she can mostly carry the movie, but the plot beats are pretty familiar with the other “Birds of Prey” being a bit more rote for a movie like this. Harley isn’t quite Deadpool, and they aren’t trying to necessarily make her a DC Deadpool, but the comparisons are somewhat obvious. The movie feints in the direction of Deadpool-style wackiness in its storytelling style but never quite commits to it, and why should any Harley story have commitment issues? The end result is something I mostly liked, but I wouldn’t say I loved it.
Grade: C+
0 Comments