Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

 

After being dumped by the Joker, psychiatrist turned crazed criminal Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) suddenly finds a long list of enemies gunning for her. That list includes crime kingpin and club owner Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), who compels Harley to steal back a diamond that teen pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) stole from his deranged henchman Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina). Wanting to keep Cassandra safe, Roman's reluctant accomplice Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett) tips off dogged police detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), who is after Harley as well as an elusive crossbow killer targetting underworld figures. Faced with the threat posed by Roman's considerable resources, Harley, Renee, and Dinah must work together to keep Cassandra alive.

The first shared-universe superhero film of 2020, Birds of Prey is an incomprehensible mess that perfectly (if unintentionally) captures the year's disappointments and frustrations. Poorly written, heavy-handed, and shallow, it offers briefly redemptive moments of humor and exhilaration to accompany the glimpses of how much better it could have been.

As is the case with many DC Comics adaptations as of late, the script is a major liability. Birds of Prey is a poor adaptation of its source material, dropping Barbara Gordon (the former Batgirl turned paralyzed information broker Oracle) in favor of placing Harley Quinn front and center. As a result, nearly every non-Harley character comes across as thinly drawn, often to their detriment. Cassandra, for instance, is Cassandra in name only, losing her inspiration's martial arts training and linguistic challenges. Add to this a premise similar to and self-aware tone evocative of the better-crafted Deadpool 2, and Christina Hodson's script is as bad as, if not worse than, the rightly-derided writing in Suicide Squad and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around here. The best that can be said about Cathy Yan's direction is that Birds of Prey is far from visually dull. Frenzied and colorful, it features a few standout set pieces, such as Harley's creative use of a beanbag cannon. At times, however, the choreography is sloppy: watching random mooks seemingly standing and waiting to be hit detracts from the experience. Whereas an Edgar Wright film can make it work, the near-constant bombast of the soundtrack here comes across as an attempt to distract from a glaring lack of substance.

Amid these constraints, the cast delivers mixed results. Robbie (who also produced) gives a spirited portrayal in the lead role, offering a compelling mix of zaniness and psychological insight. Mary Elizabeth Winstead works well as her foil, the grim, professional Huntress, but she doesn't have nearly enough screentime to flesh out the character. As Sionis, McGregor isn't given much to work with, either. He captures the character's selfishness but his hammy faux-charisma undercuts any sense of menace (save for a few brief moments toward the end). He is so obviously built up as a man for the film's women to take down that Birds of Prey plays like a bad parody of feminist themes rather than a sincere expression thereof. Both Smollett and Messina play very different takes on characters that will be familiar to television audiences. Though Smollet's Black Canary at least has an interesting backstory and a believable sense of reluctance, it's hard to see Messina's Zsasz (a repugnant creep deeply infatuated with his boss) as anything other than inferior to Anthony Carrigan's quirky cheerful sadist version on Gotham.

Were character development not given such short shrift, Birds of Prey could have been a solidly entertaining super(anti?)heroine ensemble film. Instead, bad writing and a clumsy treatment of theme place it toward the lower end of DC adaptations, and that's saying something. In an interview, Yan claimed that Birds of Prey's tepid box office was a result of audiences not being ready for a female-led superhero movie. Quite to the contrary, we're long overdue for a good one, and hers isn't it.