I wasn’t particularly interested in watching Cathy Yan’s “Birds of Prey. After all, “Suicide Squad” was such a disaster that I didn’t really care to see any of those movie characters ever again. However, Yan didn’t direct that movie (that would be David Ayer) and I this spinoff movie she shows real pizazz with the mediocre DC material at hand.
Aided by “John Wick” mastermind David Leitch, the choreography and camera work in “Birds of Prey” is quite something, never boring, maybe a little too over-the-top, but some of it most definitely works, until you get numbed down by the action overload during the final stretch.
With the full title being “Birds of Prey: The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn,” Margot Robbie is back as shrink-turned-psycho Harley Quinn. This anti-hero lacks the morals to be celebrated, but her clownish makeup and lethal ways, with her trusted hammer, no less, can’t help but get our unadorned attention from the start. Just to put things to rest, Harley tells us via voiceover in the first few minutes that she and her ‘Suicide Squad’ Joker boyfriend (Jared Leto) are no longer an item. Just like the elongated title suggests, Harley has to prove herself an independent woman. by emancipating herself from men and forming a kickass girl gang.
The gang has Dinah Lance, a.k.a. Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), cross-bow killing Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) — the latter a Gotham police detective tired of being passed over for promotion by low-IQ men. Despite being well-intentioned, the bond between the main female heroines comes off a little too topically thick and on-the-nose, so does the Quentin Tarantino-inspired narrative which has the story chopped into fragmented stories ala “Pulp Fiction”.
Roman Sisonis, a.k.a. Black Mask (Ewan McGregor), a Botox junkie who likes to peel off the faces of his enemies, and henchman Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina) are the gals’ targets. Is there an actual plot? Well, somewhat, as outsider Cassandra Cain ( Ella Jay Basco), steals an expensive diamond that Roman desperately . Since Cassandra has swallowed the jewel, Roman and his henchmen want to cut it out of her. The ladies would rather wait until she goes to the bathroom.
The formula that comes with these DC movies is still there (intro/set-up/wham-bam climax) but the message Yan wants to be sending here is all about “girl power”; the bad guys don’t get away so easy, in fact, you can feel almost every punch these testosterone-fueled baddies get from Harley Quinn and her band of merry feministas.
However, the fight scenes grow tiresome, so does the unnecessary pile-up of bodies. All delivered via ear-debilitating sound mixing. ”Birds of Prey” may be R-rated (its heir “Suicide Squad“ was stamped with a much safer PG-13 rating) but the extra gore feels unnecessary here. What felt fresh and inventive at the start turns into the usual DCEU narrative roadmap. [C+]
It gives me no pleasure to report that this is one of the worst films of Schrader’s career. Wooden acting, Jack Huston and Sofia Boutella are badly miscast, the script is dull, the photography is flat; nothing works.