And we’ve come full circle on the superhero genre. Previously, the genre’s low point was the obscenely colorful Batman & Robin, which was all flash, faux substance. A few Nolan Batmans here, a Marvel or X-Men movie there, and we’re back to the flash over substance superhero movie! Birds of Prey at least has a reason for its style and flash, unlike B&R which only showed off how awesome George Clooney’s ass was in leather.
Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), now away from the reprehensible Suicide Squad, eliminates her final tie to that movie/story by breaking up with The Joker. Harley doesn’t realize this frees all the people she’s wronged from doing harm to her finally, starting with Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), a Gotham Power Player. Along the way, Harley runs into other women who Sionis has wronged, including badass police detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), Sionis’s night club singer Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and a mysterious woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who shows up on the scene. I think you know where this might go next…
All the color, flash, and random cutting/story pausing would seem pompous and condescending in most films. In Birds of Prey, all that stuff is purposeful. Harley Quinn, by nature is off the rails: she’s been so twisted by men like the Joker that she can’t clearly keep a straight story in her head. Birds of Prey is essentially the byproduct of being in Harley Quinn’s head: story rapidly switching directions, explaining and reexplaining everything, and a general disconnect from reality, where murder is ho hum but an egg sandwich loss is beyond devastating. Director Cathy Yan’s commitment to the bit keeps the movie propelling forward with reckless abandon. Sure, that messes with the movie’s stakes, but the high energy level keeps you engaged, awaiting the next storytelling swerve.
The array of fun female characters certainly helps a lot too. Robbie really gets to be whackadoodle playing Harley Quinn, sporting that crazy accent, makeup and an endless assortment of wild facial expressions. Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character benefits greatly from the fact that the trailer totally misrepresents her character. Badass yet raised in a completely loopy way, Winstead only makes that character more fascinating the more we know her. Rosie Perez is doing her Pineapple Express character, just for good this time. If you know DC comics at all, Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s Dinah Lance will put up red flags, but she has a lot of fun playing the toughest b*tch in the room, and has more fun than the at-first-morose Lance starts the movie. Not to be outdone, Ewan McGregor and Chris Messina have a lot of fun playing over the top hammy WASPs. McGregor plays Ronan like white priviledge incarnate: irate when things don’t immediately go his way. Messina is the secret MVP of the movie though, giving Ronan’s #1 henchmen, Victor Zsasz, a weird sexual energy that makes him slightly more menacing than the unhinged Ronan himself.
Expect Birds of Prey to immerse you in the mind of Harley Quinn. Just look at the additional words in the title. Birds of Prey… and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, looking like it was added last minute by Quinn herself. For under 2 hours, that mind ride is insane, ludicrious, and pretty cool, for sure. Also, I want prequels on Huntress and Victor Zsasz, stat.