Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)


Suicide Squad, looking back, was the beginning of the end for the DC Cinematic Universe.  It was a much-anticipated film featuring a number of the Batman bad guys that are assembled to handle threats to the U.S. and, by extension, the world.  It heavily advertised a methed-out version of the Joker played by Jared Leto as well as a comic-accurate portrayal of Harley Quinn by Margot Robbie. 

Unfortunately, when it came out, the Joker was hardly there and Quinn was a supporting role.  The movie was PG-13, the villain was dull and the whole affair just felt way too familiar, which is that Warner Bros. and, by extension, Zach Snyder and everyone else running the show had no clue about what to do with the DC properties or what direction to go.  What should have been a dark-humored R-rated film instead arrived as a neutered mess that took itself way too seriously.  Cathy Yan, when directing the sequel, at least tried to fix many of those problems, but with mixed results.

Harley Quinn has been dumped by the Joker and takes the breakup rather hard, blowing up the chemical plant where they both got altered.  She is about to revel in her new-found freedom when she finds out that it comes with a price.  Everyone in Gotham that has a bone to pick with her is now out to pick said bone now that they are no longer afraid of Gotham's biggest villain.  One of those happens to be Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), aka Black Mask, a gangster who hopes to rule all of Gotham now that he has his hands on a diamond encoded with all the information to access the bank accounts of the Bertinelli Family, who were all killed a number of years prior.  

The problem is that pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) has grabbed it from Roman's right-hand man Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina) and swallowed it when brought in by the police.  To save her life Harley makes a deal with Roman to capture Cassandra and return her with the diamond, something she is reluctant to do once the two of them bond.  To complicate things further Roman's driver Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett) also wants to protect Cassandra, while an assassin called the Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has arrived and is murdering gangsters with a crossbow.  Throw Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), a police detective going after Sionis, into the mix and the whole thing becomes one giant mess for Harley to unravel.

One giant mess should have been the title of this film rather than its unruly title.  Suicide Squad may not have been received well, but when it came for a third movie James Gunn was unapologetic about simply calling it The Suicide Squad.  This could have been simply Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, which was the title Warner Bros. changed it to after it became the lowest grossing DC film.  It also should not have been promoted as a "girl boss" movie, as the fatigue was already setting in on that end.  What Cathy Yan did do right is make Harley Quinn the main character like she should have been in the original. 

However, the committee-written script gives little for anyone to do.  All these characters, if handled right, would be interesting.  Instead, little is done with them, despite Perez, Smollett, Winstead and Basco doing their best with what they have.  Same with Margot Robbie, who was pretty much born to play the role, but even though she is the main character this time it still feels shallow.  As for Ewan McGregor this is probably the worst performance in any film he has made, and that is saying a lot because he has been in many awful, unwatchable films.  

The direction seems amateurish, the music is annoying - often modern updates of classic songs, rather than just using the classics themselves - and the whole movie generally unsatisfying.  There is no sense of danger, the jokes fall flat, and if this was meant to be the origin of a new superhero team then it failed almost as bad as Madame Web.  This was despite some early positive reviews and Warner Bros. changing the name to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey within weeks of its release to try to get people to see it.  

Unfortunately, that meant she was back to being a supporting character in The Suicide Squad, even though that ended up being the one film in which it felt that Harley Quinn was used properly.  They had a chance to break out of the DC mode with a great antihero movie, much the way Deadpool did for Marvel, and as usual made every wrong move they could. 

Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Time: 109 minutes
Starring: Margot Robbie, Rosie Perez, Jurnee Smollett, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ella Jay Basco, Ewan McGregor
Director: Cathy Yan

 

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