Directed by: Cathy Yan
Release date: February 7th, 2020
Rating: 9/10
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is great. I loved it. You remember when we were all really excited for Suicide Squad and what we expected it to be? This is that. It’s fantastically fun and stylized. Everything from the costume designs to the creative storytelling screams Harley Quinn.
Birds of Prey starts out with the breakup of Harley and the Joker. The main conflict comes from the fact that she is protected from Gothams worst of the worst because she was dating the Clown Prince of Crime. Since she is no longer dating him, everyone in Gotham with a vendetta is out to get her. Just so happens that four other women; Cassandra Cain, Dinah Lance (Black Canary), Helena Bertinelli (Huntress), and Rene Montoya, find themselves in the crosshairs of Roman Sionis (Black Mask) who just so happens to also be hunting Harley.
The characters in this movie are amazing. Margot Robbie and Ewan McGregor especially. You can tell that Margot Robbie has connected with this character and, being a producer on the film, really has taken the character into her own hands. She has fun playing the character and I have fun watching her. McGregor does exceptionally well taking a break from usually being the protagonist and really flexing his acting muscles to be one of the most feared and violent crime bosses in Gotham. He really is a piece of shit and I hated the character and that just goes to show how amazing McGregor was.
The movie has a non-linear plot, which works really well. Harley narrates the film and she, being the mentally insane person she is, is an unreliable narrator; so stopping the movie and realizing that she’s missed vital information is very much true to character. It reminds me a little of a Tarantino film. In fact, I think that this is the closest we’ve ever gotten to a Tarantino comic book movie and might ever have.
Overall this is a really fun movie and everything that DC movies should be. Not that every movie has to be exactly like this, that’s not what I mean; but that each movie feels very different from one another and you can tell that different directors made them and each film should reflect the character that it’s about.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is a great film that is very colorful, stylized, and full of love from filmmaker Cathy Yan and producer Margot Robbie. The cast is amazing, especially Robbie and McGregor. This is what Suicide Squad should’ve been and I can only hope that DC keeps on making films with a quality such as this.