Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Review)
Birds of Prey is a Snarky, Scrappy, Brutal Good Time!
2020 has a lot of women-led comic book movies hitting theaters and Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is leading the charge. The film wisely chose to go for an R-rating which allowed it to show off just how crazy and scrappy the heroines could be in it. Taking a hint from Deadpool, Birds of Prey lets its freak flag fly as an empowering feminist film. I’m sure there are plenty of comic book trolls out there that will bash the film simply because they’re terrified of strong women. As a solid DC comic fan myself, I absolutely adored how uproarious and brutal this quirky flick was. Having said that, there were one or two characters I don’t think got the big screen depictions they deserved. However, I still believe this is one of the best DCEU movies to date.
Loads of you probably know that Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is Joker’s gal. Well, they’ve broken up and while the Joker was an abusive dick, there was one perk that came with dating him, protection from everyone she’s crossed in Gotham. It’s a long list and right at the top is rising crime kingpin Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor). The psycho has it out for Ms. Quinn, but she manages to find a way to keep her head above water just long enough to come up with a way to fight back against the misogynistic madman. Pieces slowly fall into place and she finds herself putting together a team of equally tough cookies, including a GCPD cop (Rosie Perez), a butt-kicking siren (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), a vigilante with rage issues (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and a pintsized pickpocket (Ella Jay Basco). Hopefully, their special brand of girl-power will be enough to defeat an army of maniacs.
Let’s have a big round of applause for director Cathy Yan. She tackles Birds of Prey with the kind of sensibility that would make Harley Quinn proud, which isn’t easy considering how crazy the character is. Her vision of the characters is one in which sexiness and strength aren’t mutually exclusive. There are plenty of short-shorts and skin-tight outfits, but the camera never lingers on them. Yan clearly understands that the vast majority of the audience will most likely be male, and she throws them a bone from time to time. However, she never serves the women up on a silver platter. Birds of Prey is a film that’s more focused on character than cleavage and I can’t stress how refreshing that is. More than that, Yan proved how invested she was in doing Birds of Prey right when she brought in John Wick director Chad Stahleski to consult on the fight scenes. Together, they create a brutal ballet as these vixens fight their way through impossible odds.
Birds of Prey managed to pull together an incredible cast. The newcomers are all great, but Robbie is clearly the cornerstone of the movie. She proves to be the perfect pick to play Harley Quinn, especially given that she’s the film’s unreliable narrator. Quinn offers plenty of strange insights as she introduces characters and comedically explains what sort of grievances they might have with her. This is especially important because it allows Birds of Prey to be told from a woman’s perspective. Almost all of the villains in the film are men (there are one or two women pissed at Quinn for various trespasses), but it never draws a line in the sand of men vs women. Birds of Prey never tries to “prove” how strong and capable the female characters are or that they’re “better” than men. They simply are total badasses while still keeping a sense of humor and femininity. One moment that stuck out to me, was during a fight scene when Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s Black Canary became frustrated with her hair constantly getting in her face and Quinn offers her a hair tie might fight. A uniquely feminine problem that a man might never have thought of for the film. Birds of Prey is filled with little details like that, that make a huge difference.
I can’t tell you what a relief it is to see the DCEU on the right track. It got off to a wobbly start for a while there, but with Aquaman, Shazam!, and now Birds of Prey, a pattern has emerged of films that keep getting better and better (the trend would have started with Wonder Woman, but Justice League kinda messed that up). I was a little disappointed with how Casandra Cain’s character was changed for the film. In the comics, she’s one of the most dangerous fighters in DC thanks to a very unique kind of training. Here, she’s a pickpocket that gets in over her head. Don’t get me wrong, Basco brought a perfect outsider perspective to Quinn’s world and I liked her a lot in it, but I was hoping to see a more combat-capable Cain. The same for Victor Zasz, who is a psychotic serial killer/ assassin in the comics. He was certainly villainous in the film, but this version seemed more sleazy than scary and never seemed that dangerous given how powerful the “heroes” were. These are just me nitpicking though because I still absolutely loved Birds of Prey.
I’m so happy that Birds of Prey is as good as it is because it proves that women-led comic book movies can be incredible and that women directors like Cathy Yan can pull them off spectacularly. Birds of Prey is a wild ride filled with snarky dialogue, absurd moments, plenty of action, and great characters. The only thing that could have made it even better, would have been a cameo from Batman, perhaps shaking his head at the mayhem left in the wake of the Birds of Prey (Gotham is his city after all). In all seriousness, Birds of Prey blew away my expectations. I found myself laughing at the jokes as often as I found myself cringing from the devastating blows that the women unleashed upon their enemies. It’s already an early frontrunner to be one of my favorite movies of the year. My fingers are tightly crossed that we’ll get a sequel.
