BIRDS OF PREY: An Ambitious, But Ultimately Uneven Adaptation of the DC Comics' All-Female Superhero Team

Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime, Superhero

Produced by: Bryan Unkeless, Margot Robbie, Sue Kroll      

Directed by: Cathy Yan  

Written by: Christina Hodson   

Production Company: Warner Bros. Pictures   

Starring: Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ewan McGregor, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay Basco, Ali Wong, Steven Williams

Runtime: 109 minutes                              

SYNOPSIS: 

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is an emotional wreck ever since her break-up with Joker. Dealing with an uncertain future, Harley’s past starts to haunt her when her encounter with a young pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) turn both of them into targets for ruthless crime boss Roman Sionis/Black Mask (Ewan McGregor), his right hand-man Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), and just about every bad guy in Gotham. Their last hope of survival and defeating Roman rest on reluctantly teaming up with Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez). 

REVIEW:

Harley Quinn’s popularity as a comic book character comes as a bit of anomaly, considering the fact that she was initially conceived by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm from a very different medium. Technically speaking, the iconic jester starts her journey off as a television character voiced by Arleen Sorkin, making her onscreen debut as Joker’s accomplice in Batman: the Animated Series (1992)’s episode “Joker’s Favor”. She only had a small role back then, but, to its creators’ surprise, her fifteen minutes of fame left a lasting impression on Batman animated show fans. From that point onwards, she has become an integral part in both the show and the comics, whether it’s through the various origin stories or crossovers.

Harley would go on to take the daring transition from animation to live-action twenty four years later with DCEU’s Suicide Squad (2016). And that movie was terrible in every regards, with the sole exception being Margot Robbie’s electrifying portrayal of the character. Robbie’s Harley earned her much acclaim from everyone, even Dini himself, and a coveted spot in James Gunn’s sequel/reboot the Suicide Squad (2021). Warner Bros. and DCEU though have bigger plans for the character.  Fans have been clamoring for a Harley Quinn standalone movie, while Robbie is much more interested in a Harley Quinn-led all-female superhero team-up movie. 

Faced with the conundrum of green-lighting Birds of Prey first or Gotham City Sirens, what transpires is the former. Birds of Prey marks Robbie’s first ever appearance in any movie in the DCEU franchise that’s not Suicide Squad-related. Like any comic book movie, it boasts a delicious ensemble cast to accompany the aforementioned bankable lead star, one that also includes big names like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosie Perez and Ewan McGregor. And it is overseen by relative newcomer Cathy Yan, a filmmaker who is going from doing the independent flick Dead Pigs (2018) to a $100 million blockbuster production. Apart from that, this movie achieves something that not many comic book cinematic universes, not even the mighty, family-friendly Marvel Cinematic Universe, can: make an R-rated movie. 

Birds of Prey is just as gleefully profane and violent as any R-rated comic book movies these days are. Yan delivers a bizarre acid trip of a movie that represents a baby step in the right direction for the DCEU. As the eight installment in the long-running saga, it feels refreshingly different from its contemporaries and yet also completely of its own at the same time. There’s an endlessly hyperactive, steroid-fueled cavalcade of rainbowy fun, WTF insanity, absurdly high energy level and girl power bravado prevalent throughout this 109 minutes of sheer chaos that’s been dialed all the way up to eleven and beyond. Sharp, edgy and brimming with Deadpool (2016)-level of self-awareness, the movie refuses to take itself too seriously and instead purely revels in subverting audience expectations at every turn. 

Yan brings an air of madcap unpredictability to Birds of Prey that’s rarely found in superhero team-up movies of this ilk as she taps into her inner Guy Ritchie by giving the audience an all-female Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) or Snatch (2000) version of DC’s stable of comic book femme fatales’ maiden cinematic adventure, where they are shady, rough-and-tumble crime caper character archetypes who spend much of the movie trying to trip over each other in a wild goose chase to obtain a missing diamond. Even Christina Hodson’s inherently Ritchie-esque screenplay is stuffed full of his trademark witty, rapid-fire, rat-tat-tat dialogue and labyrinthine plot twists. This superhero-crime hybrid further highlights the filmmakers’ bold, unique approach to the genre. Yan and Hodson’s story deconstructs the traditional essence of a traditional superhero team-up movie, putting lesser emphasis on building the team dynamic to a certain degree and more on the blurring of the line between a hero and a villain, an anti-hero and an anti-villain.  

Its greatest strength is without a doubt Harley’s surprisingly compelling and relatable arc. It’s definitely a much better origin story for her than the one in Suicide Squad and it’s also a shining example of how constraints affect the filmmakers’ creativity and innovation in a positive way, especially with its handling of Harley and the Joker’s relationship. Considering the public’s extremely negative consensus on Jared Leto’s portrayal of the Joker in Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey sort of benefits from all that DCEU’ s Joker hate, because writing him off this time around turns out to be a blessing in disguise for Harley’s character development. An expository notebook doodles-style 2D animated sequence that relays Harley and the Joker’s troubled history as a couple leading up to their separation sets the tone early: the movie is, at its core, a quirky comedy about getting through heartbreak. 

This helps create a fully-fleshed out, distinctly motivated Harley Quinn who is more than just an agent of chaos. For the majority of its first act, the movie finds the character at her most vulnerable, whose urgent longing for someone else’s affection makes her so easily manipulated by just about anyone and anything, even an egg sandwich. Her brief fling with the egg sandwich has all the sexual tension and spark that any allegedly legitimate relationship in romance stories is missing. 

There is even a very out-there sequence of her just spending the day enjoying her egg sandwich, which then builds towards a dramatic crescendo when she accidentally drops the sandwich on the floor because of a little skirmish with some law enforcers and outlaws. What keeps this silly little sandwich episode engaging are Harley’s hysterical, theatrical reaction shots sprinkled throughout the scene, unfolding in slow-motion to land the necessary emotional punch. These shots have the sort of character moments that reveal quite a lot about Harley’s personality and her current state of mind, whether it’s her typically funny side or the more poignant. 

Despite the complete absence of the Joker here, Birds of Prey is a clever meta-commentary on the Clown Prince of Crime’s celebrity status, in which his specter still looms over those who he once had a run in with, wherever they go. The longest running gag in the movie shows everyone in Gotham making a big deal out of the news that Harley and the Joker have broken up, as if they are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or something. But it also takes aim at other DCEU tropes, particularly the recent recasting of Bruce Wayne/Batman in this universe, a joke that pays off in the end. Without going into spoiler territory, there’s a cool, laugh-out-loud Suicide Squad Easter egg right at the backdrop of a police headquarter. 

Birds of Prey is a welcome respite from all the special effects-driven superhero spectacles. This whole endeavor is a whirlwind of kinetic action and balletic mayhem that relies heavily on painstakingly constructed and choreographed stunts, which isn’t all too surprising since, at one point in its production, the John Wick movies’ director Chad Stahelski came in pretty late to do some uncredited reshoots. Stahelski’s minor input does Yan a great favor in staging the gunfights, fistfights and vehicular chase sequences in the most cinematically interesting way. The movie wears its John Wick influence on its sleeve as Yan uses wide shots and long takes to heighten the immersive feel of the action, the best use of which in a fight scene on a slide that’s one-take. 

On the other technical side, Birds of Prey is shot gorgeously. Matthew Libatique’s vibrant cinematography engrosses its viewers into the movie’s psychedelic, anarchic rush, dousing every inch of the screen with bright, rainbowy colors. Daniel Pemberton’s pulsating, retro original score truly kicks everything into high gear, capturing the thrills and intensity of the action in the vein of a 1980’s arcade video game music. Erin Benach’s spectacular costumes are a feast for the eyes: a combination of punk rock-style street attires when the women are kicking butt and even a 1960’s Marilyn Monroe-style dress during one Harley Quinn musical number. 

But the longer it goes on, the more Birds of Prey begins to lose sight of its characters, gradually and unfortunately floundering under the weight of the filmmakers’ own lofty aspirations. And the overall result is somewhat of a scatterbrained mess. It’s got far too many ideas for a movie that already has the shortest runtime in DCEU history, few of which really amount to anything. 

The screenplay suffers from as much of an identity crisis as Harley herself.  The second act and third act cannot make up its mind whether if it wants to be a Harley Quinn standalone movie or a Birds of Prey movie, doing both of them all at once without giving them their due. As a Harley Quinn movie, it’s only a glass half full, and as a Birds of Prey movie, it’s an entirely empty glass. Any member of the Birds of Prey that’s not Harley Quinn is nothing but a mere footnote. They are relegated so far into the background that they seem more like an afterthought than the reason this movie was made in the first place. It doesn’t help that the supporting characters aren’t always on the same wavelength as Harley. This movie is like watching two or three different movies playing in one screen, jockeying for its viewers’ attention. Hodson struggles to fit all these disparate components together into a cohesive whole.

Birds of Prey yet again repeats Suicide Squad’s mistake, whether it’s through the filmmakers’ creative choice or studio intervention, in one specific area: bombarding the narrative with an overabundance of disposable characters and subplots, both the good guys and the bad guys, that disrupts the forward momentum. 

Huntress has little to no purpose to the story other than to play second fiddle to the rest of the team. Her character arc is handled in such a slapdash, throwaway manner it renders her existence in this universe practically meaningless. Birds of Prey doesn’t quite know what to do with the character, evident from her conspicuous absence over the course of its first two acts. Every now and then she shows up for an action set-piece but, that aside, she more often than not disappears for long stretches of the proceedings. One can almost forget that Huntress was ever in the movie at all. Any interest the movie has on her character development is barely present as it’s heavily truncated into a five minute long flashback montage explaining her motivation and how she becomes who she is today that feels like an info dump, highlight reel version of La Femme Nikita (1990). 

Speaking of another Birds of Prey member, Renee Montoya has no business being in this movie. Her cop character is so extraneous to the plot itself that she could have been removed from it and it wouldn’t change a single thing. Rather than serve the narrative, she is shoehorned in awkwardly to the mix as either a half-baked parody or homage to 1980’s cop show (who knows?). 

First things first, the entire police investigation stuff with Montoya, her superior Captain Patrick Erickson (Steven Williams) and the district attorney/ her ex-girlfriend Ellen Yee (Ali Wong) drags Birds of Prey to the mud. This subplot just doesn’t mesh well with the movie’s anti-heroine-centric angle, and it becomes a bigger problem because it takes up quite a lot of the runtime. Secondly, it tries to have its cake and eat it too with Montoya’s characterization, making her a hardboiled detective and also a buffoonish comic relief, failing on both counts. The only thing that’s consistent about her character is her flip-floppiness as her conflicted feelings about Harley shift abruptly and frequently to the point of absurdity. Flip-floppiness is equally an apt description for the eventual formation of the Birds of Prey, which feels rushed at best and unearned at worst since little of what came before suggests that it’s going into this predictable path. 

To these supporting characters’ defense though, they’re let down by the occasionally lazy storytelling. The movie’s attempt at putting its viewers in Harley Quinn’s shoes through the non-linear structure becomes a tiresome routine after a while. It’s all flashes, no substance and too showy for its own good. If anything, the constant flashforwards and flashbacks make the story even more difficult to follow. There’s also an over-reliance on Harley’s Martin Scorsese movie-inspired voice-over narration as means of fleshing out the other characters that’s an ineffective excuse for their startling lack of characterization. 

But the incredible all-star cast is more than capable of carrying Birds of Prey past a handful of its narrative shortcomings. This is a comic book movie that’s solidly-performed, with the most talented actors and actresses in Hollywood rising to the challenge or even exceeding it, depending on what is asked of them. 

Margot Robbie demonstrates a magnetic charisma powerful enough to anchor a movie with her as the marquee star, which is the case here in the leading role of Harley Quinn. Robbie’s second outing as the character is far more deliriously unhinged and deranged than anything she did in Suicide Squad. But she also provides Harley with a certain amount of human dimension that infuses nuance and depth to her ambiguous moral compass. She’s got a great heart, great sense of humor and fierce commitment towards doing some of her own stunts, especially the roller coaster set-pieces that harkens back to her I, Tonya (2017) days. 

Meanwhile, Ewan McGregor trades his usual understated acting method for something uncharacteristically yet enjoyably manic as Roman Sionis/Black Mask, Gotham’s crime boss with an oddly hilarious ruthless streak. McGregor’s overall performance is the cinematic equivalent of watching a wild, rabid dog running around town without a leash. The Scotsman is over-the-top and scenery-chewing in every sense of the word, taking huge bite of the screen in ways that always attract people’s attention, no matter how subtle his gestures are. His childlike glee, club bouncer swagger, and the quirky nonchalance to instigating violent acts make him a memorable villain everyone loves to hate and vice versa. 

Mary Elizabeth Winstead proves herself to be a total badass deserving of a feature-length standalone treatment, taking full advantage of the limited screentime given to her character Helena Bertinelli/Huntress. Winstead simply looks and acts the part, believable as the stereotypically slick, efficient female action heroine who wouldn’t flinch on the job. She shows her unexpected range too, using Huntress’ insecurity and social anxiety behind the action heroine facade to hilarious effect. 

Jurnee Smollett-Bell projects a sultry, enticing aura of pure confidence and cool as Black Canary. Bell’s no nonsense screen presence suggests a woman who can hustle her way through things without much hassle. Even when things get rough, she has the physical dexterity to match Winstead strength-to-strength and some deadly pipes. Black Canary has this one mesmerizing, literally glass-shattering scene where she is standing at the center of the stage, under a single spotlight, and starts singing through a number at the top of her lungs. 

Rosie Perez is reliably amusing, playing basically a comic book movie, goody-two-shoes variation of the same character she played in Pineapple Express (2008). Perez fits into this role of Renee Montoya quite nicely, using up all her improvisational comedic chops, bumbling charm and endearing sincerity to somehow conjure funny situations out of thin air. In her feature-length motion picture debut, Ella Jay Basco does a pretty good job of holding her ground alongside some of the bigger, more experienced names and adjusting to this foul-mouthed, R-rated reality that’s well beyond her youthful age, portraying the weaselly pickpocket Cassandra Cain with precocious, street-savvy wit. Chris Messina’s turn as the right hand man of Roman Victor Zsasz is exuberantly menacing. Messina is a worthwhile addition to this ensemble, enjoying the savagery of cutting people’s faces off or the subliminally homoerotic romance of cuddling his boss much like his partner-in-crime McGregor did.

CONCLUSION: 

Birds of Prey is an ambitious but ultimately uneven adaptation of the DC Comics’ all-female superhero team, with Margot Robbie and the action sequences’, pardon the pun, batshit crazy energy being occasionally undone by an overstuffed script and an underused cast. 

Score: 6.5/10