Green Goblin Reviews: Birds of Prey
…….and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Yeah, ok. It’s a fun title. I remember when this project first got announced as a Gotham City Siren screenplay; a comic that centered around Harley, Catwoman and Poison Ivy picking up the slack around a Gotham without a Batman. I was very nervous as it was a comic series I quite enjoyed, modeled after the sequel of a movie I thoroughly disliked (my original review on this site, matter of fact). I compared the Suicide Squad to a phonier PG-13 Smokin’ Aces; a sorta-sleazy, sorta-tacky, sorta-shitty low-brow movie you could sorta get away with watching on a Sunday afternoon. In retrospect, my position has not softened on that film in the slightest, but it has put me in the precarious predicament in which I have to have incomplete franchises in my movie collection. Yes, this is definitely going into the collection, because while Suicide Squad seems like a somehow even shittier Smokin’ Aces, Birds of Prey could very well be this generation’s Tank Girl.
Don’t let the name throw you though. While hidden in the subtitle, Harley Quinn’s(Margot Robbie) story remains the primary focus throughout the entire 1:50 playtime. Having recently broken up with the Joker and made it crime-world official by means of an Ace Chemical explosion, she’s now opened herself up to retaliation from virtually every single person she’s pissed off from just being…well…herself for however long she’s been attached to him. Over the span of a few weeks, she manages to get mixed up in a stolen diamond, a break out of prison, a run-in with an assassin and a mob turf war all centering around Ewan McGregor as Roman Sionis, the unhinged Black Mask; a sadistic face-carving mob boss who chews the scenery and is really fun to watch…until he really isn’t.
The best decision that they managed to do is just jettison everything connecting to the previous film apart from Margot Robbie. You’re given a cartoon intro at the beginning, Robbie narrates, they give you a bit of back and forth, so the narrative flow is a little Tarantino-esque but it never relies on these tricks too much. They’re meant to accentuate the jokes already there; not become filler for writing in and of themselves. Now like I said before, Harley does steal the show here, and I’d say that’s the only real flaw of the movie (albeit, a minor one) is that her costars are given less space to flex in Robbie’s shadow. Jurnee-Smolelett-Bell puts in work as a new take on the classic Dinah Lance/Black Canary, a girl who’s allegiance really seems to be more towards actual altruism than anyone else’s in the room. Same goes to Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress, a crossbow-wielding assassin, killing mob-enforcers on a motorcycle who inadvertently looks cool, but has no idea how to manually turn it on and off. And finally, what more needs to be said; Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya was perfect and I knew she was going to be perfect the instant I heard she was cast. Respect to one of the all-time greats, ladies and gentlemen. I can only hope that they’ll get a bit more development and handling in the future, but if my only minor gripe is that they left me wanting more, then they gotta be doing something right.
So what I like about DC’s regarding there films is that there doesn’t seem to really be one at the moment. They’re just letting each writing staff sort of do their own thing and allow their films to set their own course. Sometimes you get really good films that become surprises out of nowhere like Shazam!, and sometimes you have narrative missteps that inadvertently get nominated for best picture for some reason, but either way you end up with a lot more creative freedom to work with. Like with Spider-verse and Miles Morales, a movie studio has utilized this by taking a previously existing title, taking a character that’s popular right now (Harley), an actor that’s popular right now (Robbie), and created a cinematic origin story to fill a void that the cinematic audience didn’t know they needed. I think this is going to pay off for them. Mark my words. This film will have (forgive me) legs.
9/10 Put Ivy in the sequel and make them a couple, you cowards!!