Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn)

Revvin' Up Yer Ol' Harley
or
Pow! BAM! ZAP! Biff!  Plop!

Suicide Squad is destined to be remembered as not "one of the good" DCEU movies, probably because the film-makers were a bit confused about what kind of comic-book movie people wanted to see—the geniuses at Warner Brothers figured that Christopher Nolan's Batman movies worked so well that the movies should be dark, take themselves seriously and never wink at the audience. No primary colors, only leather costumes, and "deconstructed" to show how superheroes would be operating in the "real world."

The answer, apparently, is "not very well."

But, the most unlikely of the movies—the ones that were delayed as potential box-office poison (Wonder Woman) or an industry joke (Aquaman)—showed that "grim n' gritty" won't make a comic book movie respectable. Working very hard to make a good comic book movie entertaining does.

What everybody remembers from Suicide Squad (and probably the reason they went in the first place) was the character of Harley Quinn. The character was introduced in the "Batman: The Animated Series" cartoon in 1992 and, frankly, one of the few "recent" additions to the Batman "Rogues Gallery" to have stuck around to become popular. A lot of actresses could have played Quinn and done well with it, it actually didn't have to be the latest "it" girl, Margot Robbie. But, Robbie is smart enough to know that her character work will supply longevity and she is "player" enough to push a Harley Quinn movie through development, even before a Squad sequel could be made.

The result—Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)* The title suggests something larky, a suggestion that isn't quite fulfilled unless Robbie's Harley is on the screen. Without that character's giddy sociopathy, the film would be just an unpleasant gangster movie, no matter how many bright primary colors are thrown into the mix. The movie is all her, and, sure, there are more of the DC female vigilante's thrown into the mix, but they're there to have the main character have someone to bounce off, like Margaret Dumont to Groucho Marx and the female empowerment story isn't strong enough unless Quinn's anarchy is there to light the fuse while hap-hazardly threatening to stamp it out.

The film gets off to a roaring start by doing the most important thing right off the bludgeoning bat—blowing up the most toxic relationship in all of comics. Harley Quinn may be a favorite of fan-boys, but there's always been something icky about the character—her complete and total devotion to being a doormat for The Joker ( who does not appear as Jared Leto who had the role in Suicide Squad was unavailable and Joaquin Phoenix is too busy picking up trophies**). Harley plays unreliable narrator to an animated story of her life—for those who came in late—and explains that she and the Joker have had an unamicable break-up that *good news* she has managed to survive! Despite her past skills as a psychologist—and because she is bat-shit crazy—she finds a dive apartment above a Gotham City Chinese restaurant, chops off her hair, drinks heavily, and joins the roller derby to work off some of the aggression she can't shake throwing knives at a picture of the Joker hanging on her wall. 

She gets a pet, a hyena she calls "Bruce," (a Superman-sized wink on that), moons over the "perfect egg sandwich", and hits the bars at night, particularly the Black Mask Club, run by gangster Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor). Even though she's a perpetual train-wreck in the place, Sionis turns a blind eye because she's the Joker's squeeze and that affords her a certain amount of protection, even when she cripples Sionis' driver. But, pretty soon pride pride wins out and she announces the break-up to the world by driving an oil tanker truck into "their place" the Ace Chemical Factory, which explodes in a celebratory light-show.

This alerts the Gotham City Police that Harley is fair game for arrest for (well) a lot of property damage, and Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) of the GCPD is determined to bring her in, despite the presence of a serial killer, dubbed "The Crossbow Killer," who has been winnowing out a lot of Gotham's underworld. 

Plus, there's Sionis, who is trying to find something called "the Bertinelli diamond" which has etched in its facets the codes to all the accounts of the Bertinelli crime family, who were wiped out in an assassination years before. Sionis is after the diamond and uses his henchman Victor Szasz (Chris Messina—the character also appeared in Batman Begins) to extract information from sources by cutting their faces off (yeah, not so much fun, huh?)

Cut (very poor choice of words) to the McGuffin—it is that Bertinelli diamond and everybody wants it. Sionis wants it. He wants Harley to get it. "The Crossbow Killer" wants it. Montoya wants it and she wants Sionis' new driver Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell)—who performs at his club as a singer with a special octave range—to tell her where it is. Szasz used to have it but it was pick-pocketed by a street-urchin named Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) who Harley takes pity on a takes under her wing. It is complicated, and it isn't helped by the fact that Harley is the film's narrator and...she skips parts and has to rewind to fill those parts in.

On top of that, the film has to have some sort of action every ten minutes or so, and fortunately director Cathy Yan manages to perform the plate-spinning act of keeping the film active with all that exposition and back-story—and the back and forth story-telling actually keeps it from flagging. She's also good at action, even when it's a group-fight among quite a few number of people. There is the temptation, given that the last fight takes place in a Burton-esque fun-house called "The Booby-Trap"*** and with a color-palette suggestive of Schumacher's Batman and Robin that Yan might be harkening back to the old "Batman"-TV series—only with better stunts and no OOF! graphics.

The acting is across the map: Robbie and McGregor are putting as much theatricality into it as they can, verging on going over the top. Rosie Perez is playing it straight and bad-ass. Smollett-Bell's Lance/Canary feels a little restrained when her character's conflicted, but once a part of the "Birds" group of Montoya/Canary/Huntress, she's great. The most interesting performance is by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is usually terrific, but her playing of the character "The Huntress" is in a style I'd call full-on-Tig Notaro (not that there's anything wrong with that—Notaro is a personal favorite), but, admittedly, the character she plays is...a bit bizarre—not in the comic-book world, but definitely a bit grimmer than everybody else. Combine her with Robbie's odd-ball and the others semi-playing it straight, there was really nowhere for her to go—the character is underwritten, despite having a 'presence" in the film—except take the kinda straight/kinda "weird" approach that she does.

So, it's not the sure-fire "Hey, yer gonna have a GREAT time" kind of movie all the Robbie-promotion promises—it's just that is the most enjoyable and exploitable part of it. One is tempted to say that all the best parts are in the trailer, but that simply isn't true. It's merely that the "sizzle" aspect is all centered on one character, and unless one wanted to do a Comedy of Errors in Gotham City type of movie (which, actually, might not be a bad idea, given the grimness of the place, historically), there's going to the risk of a burn-out factor and the risk of the character of Harley Quinn out-wearing her welcome if something isn't counter-balancing her. There's got to be a little arsenic in the sugar bowl or you might as well start budgeting for the BIFF! POW! ZAM! graphics that have been what the comics industry has been trying to get away from for decades.

* Owing to poor opening weekend receipts the title has subsequently been alternately displayed as Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (maybe because some folks might think Harley Quinn's not in it).

** Can you imagine the disconnect if you paired Robbie's Harley Quinn with Joaquin Phoenix's Joker? The idea makes one's skin crawl, so we'll just assume that his Joker lives in alternate dimension, on Earth-Scorsese.

*** Some examples of production design: