Movie Review: Birds Of Prey And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey
Director: Cathy Yan
Writer: Christina Hodson
Stars: Margot Robbie, Rosie Perez, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollet-Bell, Ewan McGregor, Ella Jay Basco

The title of this film is misleading. This is a Harley Quinn film featuring the Birds of Prey and that isn’t a knock on the film. Birds of Prey is f-word laced, violent and frequently funny with everyone having a heap of fun in their roles. In short it’s very entertaining.

When Harley and the Joker break up, she tries to find her place in the world. When the rest of Gotham finds out that they have broken up, Harley is on everyone’s hit list – none more so than the Black Mask himself, Roman Sionis. This brings Harley into the orbit of Black Canary, Renee Montoya and Huntress. The point of interest for all these characters is Cassandra Cain that for spoiler reasons I won’t go into.

As mentioned, this is a Harley Quinn film – Margot Robbie knows it and absolutely crushes in this film. Adding depth and feeling to a character that could easily come off as the kooky, violent, manic pixie dream girl, Robbie and writer Christina Hodson give her the proper treatment. Now, in contrast, the Birds Of Prey get mixed treatment, but the actors are all excellent however.

Black Canary gets the most story and by default is the more interesting of the BOP. Smollett-Bell is great and excels in both the action and the acting, giving Black Canary some real heart. Renee Montoya is written as the hard as nails cop and Perez really doesn’t get much of chance to get outside of that whilst Huntress is played awkwardly by Winstead, but she doesn’t get a lot to do, so I guess she trying to add some flavour to the role. Basco plays Cassandra Cain as the not so innocent and kinda weary kid that’s seen a lot. It works within the film, but people familiar with the Cassandra Cain of the comics I suspect won’t be happy. On the villain side of things, predictably, MacGregor has a hell of a lot of fun with Roman Sionis/Black Mask. Played like a vicious douchebag, he manages to be in turns hilariously camp and scarily violent.

Yan does well here, pulling off some very cool sequences – none better than Harley’s assault on the police station. It is colourful, aggressive and funny and I don’t care what film you watch this year you won’t get a better action set piece than the one in the police evidence storeroom. Unfortunately the final fight sequence doesn’t quite match up to this, with the exception of a wild demise for one of the bad guys involving a hand grenade and the result being front and centre on screen.

On the down side the film suffers from structure issues. There is a lot of rewinding back to certain points. Sometimes it works, but mostly it sucks the momentum from the film. However, the film overcomes this and is just a flat out fun time. A film that wears its girl power heart on its sleeve.

Ryan Morrissey-Smith