In 2016, DC/WB unveiled Suicide Squad in hopes that the color, flair and bombastic nature would offset the dark vibes brought on by their earlier release of the year, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. While the trailers for SS were so enjoyable, the movie was a studio-infiltrated mess. While it seemed that everyone involved was thrown under the bus, it still made nearly $800M. The lesson WB decided to take from that success is that audiences must love Margot Robbie’s take on Harley Quinn.
The official title for this movie is Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. It’s an inarguably long title and it’s clear that the studio is burying the lede. This is a Harley Quinn movie through and through.
Harley Quinn finally makes her break-up with the Joker public knowledge and every criminal and cop in Gotham realize that she no longer has any protection. They all want her dead or harshly punished for her years of personal terrorism. Though, no one wants her dead more than Roman Sionis/Black Mask (Ewan McGregor).
It’s in this mad-cap dash to survive that she gets entangled in even more trouble and she is eventually joined by the Birds of Prey – Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez).
The story told by Harley jumps all over the place to catch you up on context that is crucial to the plot. It’s almost as if she’s trying to tell us what happened during her day and she remembers, “Oh yeah, let’s backtrack! I forgot this part! I wouldn’t want you to get lost in plot holes!” It’s a clever technique that keeps you distracted from a very simple story and keeps the movie as fast-paced as it needs to be. This movie is 106 minutes and does not hold a dull moment.
Even with its fun story-telling format, you won’t remember any of it after it ends. You just know that there are reasons that people want Harley dead, there’s a diamond chase, and somehow the Birds of Prey flock together. There is little significance to the movie other than letting us walk in the bone-breaking boots of Harley for a couple of days.
Speaking of bone-breaking, the selling point of BOP is the action. There’s no need for huge explosions, cosmic space battles, or sky beams. Instead, it all comes down to close-quarter combat done in exciting environments. They brought in stuntman/director of John Wick, Chad Stahelski, to reshoot the fighting scenes and it’s the best move they could have made. Each fight is unique and so much fun that you wish this movie was more of an unapologetic beat-em-up. Margot Robbie becomes a full-fledged action star here.
Even though Harley is a bubblegum lunatic, she still captures your attention. Robbie is having the time of her life in the role that never feels lazy or tired. The Black Canary and Huntress are fun characters, but are too little used here. A possible sequel could definitely explore that dynamic more hopefully. Ewan McGregor is hamming it up throughout the movie as rich kid/ganglord Black Mask, and his delivery is so much fun to watch. It’s a decent cinematic introduction to this C-level Batman villain. However, there isn’t much reasoning behind his motivations or why we’re supposed to find him intimidating. The movie does go out of its way to make him despicable (just in case the audience liked him), when he makes a sudden shift and humiliates a woman at his club.
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn continues the streak of successes for DC and shows that they are willing to experiment within the super hero genre. I do think that this will be one of the forgettable entries in time and wouldn’t be much more than average if it weren’t for the stellar fight scenes, but it’s still better than the trailers let on. B-
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