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Movie Review: 'Birds of Prey' Gives Us the Harley Quinn We Always Wanted

Margot Robbe is awesome in 'Birds of Prey'

By Sean PatrickPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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Birds of Prey is as fun and exciting as Suicide Squad was bad and forgettable. The character of Harley Quinn as embodied by Margot Robbe, escaped the disaster that was Suicide Squad and has come out the other side a bigger and more bankable star than ever. Not many actors can say that starring in a bad movie worked out for the best but Robbe taking the character of Harley from Suicide Squad to Birds of Prey does just that, it worked out for one of the best D.C movies.

Birds of Prey finds our beloved anti-heroine Harley Quinn, heartbroken. You see, Harley and The Joker have broken up, for good this time. This is far more messy than your average break up. For years, Harley has gotten by in life by being Joker’s girl, untouchable to anyone no matter what she did to them. Without Joker’s protective wing, it’s open season for everyone that Harley has ever wronged, including many of Gotham’s nastiest criminals.

One of those eager to gain revenge on Harley Quinn is a rising criminal kingpin named Roman Sionis, aka The Black Mask. He’s been wanting to do harm to Harley for some time for various reasons, from being a nuisance in his nightclub to breaking the legs of his newly hired private chauffeur. With Joker out of the picture, Roman is free to put a hurt on Harley but first, he’s got business to take care of.

Roman is after a valuable diamond with ties to a local mob legend. Unfortunately, his top henchmen, played by Chris Messina, lost it to a pickpocket named Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). Cassandra meanwhile, didn't know what she stole until well after she’d stolen it. Just after the theft she gets arrested and taken to the Gotham jail where she crosses paths with Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) and Harley who comes bursting in to bust Cassandra out.

Running parallel to this story is the arrival of a new killer in town. Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has been taking her revenge on mobsters in Gotham and landing herself on the wrong side of Roman Sionis in the process. And finally, there is Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett), a nightclub singer who is forced into the job of Roman’s driver before she betrays him to protect Cassandra for reasons made clear in the plot.

Do you got all of that? Good, because the movie is way more than that description entails. The internecine plot carries echoes of The Coen Brothers if they were to lower themselves to the comic book genre. The shifts in time and Harley’s irreverent voiceover take you inside her scattered mind in a way that I found exciting and charming. Robbe’s performance is so charismatic that even the overly labored voiceover trope doesn’t bother me here.

Birds of Prey was directed by Cathy Yan and is only her second feature film after the 2018 movie, Dead Pigs. In just her second feature, Yan shows visual invention and playfulness that I am eager to see her develop and explore in the future. Yan has a natural voice that is irreverent and funny and comes through in her fast paced and colorful direction. It helps to have Margot Robbe and a terrifically watchable supporting cast, but it takes a good director to make it sing and zing as well as Birds of Prey does.

I don’t know much about the Birds of Prey comic book but I can say that the movie is a lot of fun. Harley herself, is not one of the Birds of Prey, per se, she’s more of the catalyst that aligns the group. She’s willing to work with them here but where they have plans to be heroes and fight evil, Harley is still more interested in her criminal past times. It will be fun to see how future sequels find Harley and the Birds interacting.

Just as much fun will be the further development of Cassandra Cain. I am aware of Cassandra, as a comic book creation. In the D.C comic universe, Cassandra Cain is the future Batgirl and member of the Bat family, a protege of Batman. To see her here in her pre-Batgirl form, with a whole new origin story and background was exciting for me, even if comic book fans may find some of the changes troubling.

Birds of Prey is a whole lot of fun, with a strong female voice, a tremendously talented cast, and a vibe reminiscent of the fun and funny of Deadpool, right down to the bloody violence and foul mouthed, R-Rated shenanigans. While D.C has struggled to bring their comic book properties to the big screen, when they get it right they can really knock it of the park. Birds of Prey is a real home run.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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