Starring: Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay Basco, Ewan McGregor
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 109 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2020
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With its deservedly adult rating, non-linear storytelling, street-level action scenes and message of female empowerment, ‘Birds of Prey’ is possibly the least commercial mainstream comic book movie of the last decade. Yet indie director Cathy Yan’s film is as defiantly strange, playful and unpredictable as her leading lady. With Yan and star-cum-producer Margot Robbie’s risk-taking ultimately paying dividends, DC’s latest cinematic effort to be set in their now semi-abandoned shared universe takes its place next to ‘Wonder Woman’ at the top of the pile.
Screenwriter Christina Hodson’s inciting incident of choice makes a bold statement: Harley (Margot Robbie) has just broken up with her long-time beau, Mister J, a.k.a. The Joker. Other than distancing ‘Birds of Prey’ from Jared Leto’s widely panned turn as the Clown Prince of Crime in ‘Suicide Squad’, this move also marks a soft reset for the character, who received little character development in her last outing that was independent of her and her erstwhile lover’s twisted romance. Now, freed(ish) from her emotional baggage and with a couple of talented women assuming writing and directing responsibilities, Harley is unleashed on Gotham as her own woman.
But moving on from a relationship isn’t always easy, especially when trying to doing so puts you in the crosshairs of every thug in your city’s underworld. When Harley drunkenly blows up Ace Chemicals, a warped emotional monument within her and Mr J’s storied relationship, she inadvertently signals to a lot of bad people with serious grudges against her that she is no longer under the Joker’s ironclad protection. It’s open season on Harley Quinn.
Hodson’s story sets Harley’s evasion of her wannabe score-settlers as the B-plot to a bigger story about competing efforts to recover a valuable diamond; it’s valuable not for its carat count, but for the access codes to a lost fortune encoded inside it. The dominant player in the search for the stone is Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), a psychotic club owner (read: one of the Joker’s business competitors) with a penchant for peeling off the faces of those that cross him, or at least ordering his henchman Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina, embracing the character’s creepiness) to do to the peeling.
To add to the narrative’s non-linear mayhem, there’s also the Crossbow Killer on the loose, a leather-clad hitwoman who styles herself as “Huntress” (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, underutilised), dogged detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) sniffing around Sionis, and a mysterious nightclub entertainer known as Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) right in the middle of the action. When the highly sought-after diamond ends up in the possession of 12-year-old pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), Harley identifies Cain as the key to her emancipation, but she’ll need to get a bit more girl power on board if she wants to bring her plan to fruition.
As I alluded to earlier, ‘Birds of Prey’ undoes some of the more egregious elements of ‘Suicide Squad’; not only is Leto’s Joker nowhere to be seen, but the screenplay actually remembers that, behind Harley Quinn’s madness, there lurks certified prodigy Dr Harleen Quinzel, PhD. Margot Robbie is clearly having a blast playing the different sides of Quinn, which she shuffles in and out with an unpredictable élan (and she’s also thankfully smoothed out her Noo Yawk accent after a hot and cold attempt in her previous outing). Though some of the editing and pop needle drops are redolent of ‘Suicide Squad’, they seem to make a lot more sense in Harley’s world, characterised by DP Matthew Libatique and costume designer Erin Benach as a colourful acid trip.
Comparisons to ‘Squad’ aside, director Cathy Yan has marshalled a great little action movie that earns the right to stand by itself. The action is genuinely impressive. This is not a typical, CGI-fuelled comic book action movie; instead, it’s punctuated with the impressive and hard-hitting fight choreography of esteemed second unit director Chad Stahelski, he of ‘John Wick’ fame. Though violent, these bright and bloody brawls are a load of fun, from Quinn’s slow-motion-inviting raid on a police station to the final showdown in abandoned carnival, which culminates in a surprising but thrilling roller-skating set piece. Next to a cracking opening hour, which filled the time between the more thrilling bits with fun and fizzy character work, this second half is a tad grim, largely because the plot needs to push the needle on Sionis further towards stock villain mode. It’s a shame because McGregor’s performance begins with a strangely experimental vibe, flitting almost randomly between smooth and theatrical to cold and psychotic, a bold choice is eventually eroded into something duller.
Take those last sentences with a large grain of salt though, because ‘Birds of Prey’ is far from dull overall. It’s everything that you thought a Harley Quinn spinoff should be, plus with its top-notch fight and stunt work, it’s arguably a little bit more too. This flamboyant delivering of more than promised feels like something that Harley herself would be pleased to become known for. It’s just as the plot and the film itself prove: you can’t keep a good(ish) woman down.
Callum Ryan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
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