After splitting with the Joker, Harley Quinn joins superheroes Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya to save a young girl in Birds of Prey
Quick review: Birds of Prey has all of the chaotic energy that a movie about Harley Quinn should have packaged in a frenetic action-filled romp that’s impossible to resist.
Where to watch Birds of Prey: In theaters now
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) has all of the chaotic energy that a movie about Harley Quinn should have. It’s often messy, sometimes over-the-top, confusing, laugh out loud funny, cringy, endearing, and somewhere beneath it all is the best DC extended universe movie thus far.
Harley Quinn (a pale, manic pixie dream girl Margot Robbie) was done largely wrong in the abysmal Suicide Squad where we were introduced to this universe’s version of the Joker. Not only was her character terribly one-note, but she also played nothing more than a second fiddle to other characters’ storylines — if you could even give the movie credit for having those. However, Birds of Prey is her movie. She even tells us that at the start.
Mercifully, at the beginning of the film Mr. J and Harley break up — she’s not taking it well. Her debaucherous and boozy relationship mourning ends with a colorful decimation of the chemical plant where she first jumped into a vat of acid to prove her devotion to Mr. J and took on the persona of the excitable Harley Quinn — affected New York accent and all.
And while she may find some closure in it, it also notifies all of Gotham City that she’s no longer under the Joker’s protection. That means everyone — and I mean everyone — is after her. That includes Roman Sionis (a deliciously camp Ewan McGregor), a crime lord whose trip for power went right through Helena Bertinelli’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) family — eventually, we learned she gave herself the name Huntress. She, trained as a master assassin, now seeks vengeance for her family’s deaths. But I, like the movie, am getting ahead of myself.
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Just like Harley, the movie’s plot, structure, and style is playful and erratic. We jump back and forth in time getting to know the women that will eventually form the eponymous Birds of Prey and how they’ll eventually come to work together. However, I’m reluctant to call this a team-up movie. There aren’t scenes where the women take a break to see that they’re not so different after all. The team-up is really a product of necessity, adding to this clever subversion of the superhero story.
The other two members of the birds are Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), an underappreciated but talented detective in the Gotham City Police Department, and Dinah Laurel Lance or Black Canary (Jussie Smollett-Bell), a singer in Roman’s club who eventually is recruited as his driver. Through thoroughly entertaining sequences, we learn of each woman’s abilities and their reason’s for seeking emancipation from the men in their lives.
The more comic book movies stop being comic movies and start being about something else the better. Birds of Prey locks in on a feminist thematic consistency where women are underappreciated and often taken advantage of by men. Without being completely overt — looking at you Joker — it allows its characters to break free of those confines and eventually find each of the women peace.
Along the way, we are treated to a delightfully whacky performance by Robbie that keeps you locked in on the movie’s energetic pace and tone. Without her, it’s clear that Birds of Prey would not work. However, director Cathy Yan has to be credited with keeping the movie largely on the rails. It could have easily become unwieldy, instead, the plotting feels tight, even when the actual visuals on the screen go berzerk.
Not only that, the movie has some of the best action in a superhero movie in years. Easy to follow, but brutally beautiful to watch. It feels reminiscent of John Wick or Atomic Blonde. It’s impossible to not feel filled with adrenaline after watching the birds fight. Of course, they need to be fighting for something. In this case, they’re fighting for a teenage girl’s emancipation too. Cassandra Cain (newcomer Ella Jay Basco) has a bounty on her head after she pickpockets a diamond from Roman. And while that diamond might be a McGuffin, the journey that it inspires is full of purpose.
As crazy as Harley is, Robbie plays her with a shread of humanity that was once there. Birds of Prey is keenly aware that although it’s a superhero movie, it needs to be grounded in something. And because of that, it soars.
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.
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