[rating=8.00]
Regardless your takeaway from 2016’s Suicide Squad, which quite often threatened to be at least kind of fun, there was really no denying how bad it was. It was rushed and slapdash, serving no clear purpose and derailing any chance Warner Brothers and the DCEU had at establishing good will with a fan base hungry for comic books movies.
The plot made zero sense, the structure was distracting, the introduction of Joker was botched from the beginning, and tonally it just didn’t work. Already facing criticism for their “throw everything out and see if anything sticks” philosophy to universe building, Suicide Squad was an epic misfire that represents so much of what’s wrong with studio filmmaking.
Except, of course, for Margot Robbie. The live action introduction of her character, Harley Quinn, Joker’s long-suffering paramour, first introduced in the popular Batman the Animated Series before becoming a staple of the comic book world, was the brightest spot in an otherwise dismal production. Robbie’s performance begged for exploration. She was fun, funny, fascinating, and brilliant. Fortunately, unlike so much of Suicide Squad and the DCEU, she wasn’t buried in the subsequent shakeup.
Robbie returns in the fiendishly delicious indirect follow up to Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Unlike her last appearance, Birds of Prey is only nominally a team up movie. Here, Harley is the star and the titular Birds of Prey are merely the device through which we can explore her character more in depth. And it is the best DC movie since Wonder Woman.
In Harley, DC has found their Deadpool. She’s a character we can delight in loving for all the wrong reasons. She’s insane, she’s unpredictable, she’s irreverent, and she’s the strongest character DC’s introduced in their wonky universe. She is the unrestrained id of superheroes and it’s a role that Robbie clearly delights in filling.
Birds of Prey opens with Harley mourning the breakup of her relationship with Mr. J. Having spent so long under his thumb, she spirals into self-destruction and wreaks a havoc which puts her in direct conflict with, well, everyone in Gotham City. Not the least of which is Gotham PD’s Det. Montoya (Rosie Perez) and new boss of the city’s mob, Roman Sionis, aka, The Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). Caught in the mix is a missing diamond Sionis needs to solidify his claim on the city’s crime syndicate, the whereabouts of which are known only by lounge singer Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary (Jurnee Smollet-Bell) and a mysterious vigilante known as Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Slowly, the competing aims of the four women circle each other until the four realize they must work together to take down Sionis.
Even with the emphasis on her would-be teammates, Birds of Prey is still very much a Harley Quinn movie. She serves as our narrator, taking us into the bizarre world of Gotham City crime while serving as our main narrative focal point. Director Cathy Yan and writer Christina Hodson have crafted a perfectly absurd and zany film that’s equal parts revenge story, heist movie, and post-breakup empowerment. And, yes, it works well as all three.
The heart of Birds of Prey is the sub-titular Fantabulous Emancipation of Robbie’s Quinn, with everything else serving as set dressing for her tale of personal empowerment. Yan, Hodson, and Robbie have made the best empowerment film in years hidden behind graphic violence and wanton anarchy. There’s a vulnerability to Harley Quinn seen in Birds of Prey that didn’t exist in Suicide Squad. She is a woman in search of herself after spending years being systematically abused by her lover. And, okay, maybe her self is, as the tattoo on her face suggests, rotten, but there’s power in knowing where your strengths lie. Hers just happen to be in mayhem and violence. She is a strong, independent criminal who don’t need no man.
While the back and forth, out of order structure of Birds of Prey seems off putting at first, we soon see that it serves as a reflection of our narrator’s chaotic mind. It’s not dissimilar in structure to Suicide Squad in a certain regard, but it works here because it serves a larger purpose. Birds of Prey is framed as if we’re in the room with Harley as she’s telling us the story, and the back-and-forths and bizarre asides work in the same way that listening to a chaotic story told by your drunk, hyperactive friend works.
It also adds to the irreverent, off-beat tone of the film that works far better than Marvel’s Deadpool. That, of course, is the easiest comparison to make here, except Harley Quinn doesn’t brow beat you with nods and winks. Instead, Yan and Hodson take a slow, more subtle approach to their skewering that ends up accomplishing everything Deadpool did with far less effort expended.
Hopefully, DC takes the right lessons away from Birds of Prey. It’s possible to be both fun and gritty and you don’t need to be dour to be violent. Harley Quinn is an inherently fun character with a rich story worth exploring. This bodes well for the long-gestating Gotham City Sirens, which will supposedly find Harley teaming up with DC villains Poison Ivy and Catwoman. It’ll be great to see how Harley Quinn progresses between films and, after the wild ride of Birds of Prey, we certainly deserve more of her character.
Birds of Prey is now playing in theaters everywhere.
