Alright, let’s talk about Birds
of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). My God,
that’s a wordy title. I hope one holds it against me that I’ll just refer to it
as Birds of Prey. And by that, I mean, I will refer to it as Birds of
Prey so you have to just deal with it. Also, as this is an R-Rated film, I
feel it’s my duty to tell my under age readers to talk to their parents before
continuing. That means you, Wesley Peter Korba. Now that I’ve called out my nephew,
let’s get to it.
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| A movie poster that is both bizarre and yet bizarrely accurate. |
While this movie is called Birds
of Prey, it is very much the story of Harley Quinn. Not only is she the
main character, she’s also the narrator. Considering her… less than stable
mental state, you can imagine that this story is going to be a little disjointed.
I’m going to try to present things a bit more concisely.
We open with Harley giving a brief
history of her life. Shock of shocks, she had an abusive dad. Other highlights
include her getting a Ph. D. in Psychology, meeting and falling into her insanely
abusive relationship with the Joker, and her dip in the Ace Chemical chemicals.
The woman has had it rough. Though things get rougher when the Joker breaks up
with her and throws her out of the street. I’ll answer this now, no, at no point
do we see Jared Leto’s Joker. He’s referenced constantly, but isn’t even shown
in the flashbacks. Weird, I know, but that’s film for ya. Harley does her best
to rebuild herself after being ditched by Joker. She gets her own apartment,
her own Spotted Hyena, and takes up roller derby. Her new home, pet and outlet
for her anger do wonders for her, but just about everyone she knows still thinks
it’s only a matter of time before she and Joker get back together.
Extremely pissed off, she hits up a nightclub
owned by Roman Sionis. He’s a local gangster that also goes by the name Black
Mask. While drunk, she cripples Sionis’ driver for being rude to her but gets
away with it. Why? Because she really hasn’t spread around too much that she
and Joker broke up. Why? Because Joker’s girlfriend can do things like break a
man’s legs without consequences from anyone not connected to Batman. She’s
saved from almost being abducted by some goons by Dinah Lance, the club’s burlesque
singer. This saves Harley from a not fun night, and gets Dinah the additional
job as Sionis’ new driver. He and his #2 Victor Zsasz were watching from the
nearby building.
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| Black Mask and Zsasz have a very weird but kind of perfect chemistry. |
Still drunk and angry, Harley has a
brilliant idea, and by that, I mean an insanely stupid idea. She crashes a truck
into the Ace Chemical plant, destroying it and metaphorically napalming her relationship
with the Joker. The Ace Chemical plant being where they cemented their
relationship in this continuity. The massive explosion draws the attention of the
GCPD, and one of their detectives in particular, Renee Montoya. Montoya had
been investigating the crossbow related death of several mobsters nearby. She
discovers Harley’s necklace at the scene and seems to intuit that the explosion
was Harley’s Screw You letter to the Joker. She’s also investigating Roman
Sionis, and reaches out to Dinah to get her to turn informant. The old driver
had also been her informant, but obviously the broken legs kept him from being
useful.
Sionis sends Zsasz and Dinah to
pick up an incredibly important diamond. Said diamond has the account numbers
of the deceased Bertineli crime family encoded in it. I don’t know if that
sciences, but we’ll roll with it. The pick up goes smoothly, but unfortunately
for them, Zsasz get’s pickpocketed by Cassandra Cain whom is then immediately
arrested. She swallows the diamond to hide it. My God, that’s a dumb decision.
Harley, meanwhile, tries to enjoy
her disgusting breakfast sandwich, but is stopped by Montoya tracking her down…
followed by just about any and every petty criminal she’s ever pissed off. Sionis
had put out a hit on Harley within minutes of discovering that Harley and Joker
were no longer a thing. She’s saved from getting killed by one of them by the
mysterious crossbow killer from earlier, but is then grabbed by Sionis’ goons. She’s
taken to the club where Sionis plans to have her killed but is able to save her
skin by promising to get the diamond back for him. She decided to get into the
mercenary business as her new business venture, and escaping execution sounds like
a hell of a first paycheck. Szasz had just informed him of the missing diamond
and the girl that had stolen it. Sionis agrees, saying that if she doesn’t get
it back for him by midnight, she’s dead. To hedge his bets, he also puts out a
half million-dollar bounty on Cassandra and sends it to literally every criminal
in town.
Side note, I guess that Batman is
out of town this week?
Harley busts into the GCPD using a
grenade launcher and a ton of non-lethal rounds. Beanbags, gas and confetti
rounds specifically. She frees Cassandra, and after killing an INSANE number of
goons, she and Cassandra make a break for it. I’m summarizing heavily here, but
it’s a solid ten minutes of Harley just beating the crap out of generic goons
and Gotham Hells Angels. The two ladies start bonding after stealing a bunch of
groceries and Harley takes her back to her place. While they’re upstairs, the
crossbow killer stops by and talks to her landlord. It’s then revealed that the
crossbow killer is really Helena Bertinelli, the loan survivor of the deceased
crime family. She’d been saved by one of the goons that killed her family when he
discovered her in a pile of bodies. His father and brother then trained her in
combat and now she’s back in town to murder the crap out of the goons that
killed her family. Oh, and she prefers the name Huntress. A bunch of goons then
attack Harley’s apartment, as her landlord Doc sold her out for an undisclosed
but large amount of money.
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| I'm just going to put my hands up and back away slowly. |
Harley calls up Sionis and gets him
to back off in exchange for the diamond. They agree to meet at an abandoned amusement
park. Sionis sends Dinah and Zsasz to the pickup. Dinah texts Montoya about the
meeting. Montoya, like a flipping moron, answers the text, and Dinah, like an
even bigger moron, leaves her phone out where Zsasz can see. Zsasz makes Dinah
make a pitstop and he calls Sionis to let him know. Sionis, distraught at Dinah’s
“Betrayal” dons his Black Mask and plans to meet Zsasz there.
Montoya makes it to the Amusement
park just after Harley and Cassandra and confronts Harley. Harley kicks the
older woman’s ass and knocks her out of a window just before getting tranquilized
by Zsasz. He then hold’s Dinah at gunpoint as she tries to sneak Cassandra out.
He’s shot in the throat and killed by Helena. Montoya rejoins the other women
just as Roman Sionis and his False Face Society arrive to get the diamond. It’s
up to Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey to defeat Sionis and get Cassandra somewhere
safe.
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| Is getting a pet exactly like one that you used to share with an ex a sign of growth or refusal of it? Legit question. |
Alright, so the good first. The cast
is really solid. Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn. While I still contend
that Suicide Squad was terrible, Margot’s Harley was one of the best
aspects of it. She is great at the acting ditzy but then suddenly breaking out
insanely accurate psychological assessments of people. Mary Elizabeth Winstead
is great as Helena Bertinelli/Huntress. She’s great as this trained killer that
really wants to be taken seriously, but just can’t make it work. There’s a
great scene where she practices intimidating dialogue in front of her mirror
but just can’t get it right. Jurnee Smollett-Bell is an interesting take on
Dinah Lance. While I don’t get her fashion sense, she’s great with her conflicting
desires. On the one hand she prefers to just work as a singer and later driver
for Sionis, but just keeps getting drawn into hero work because she’s too good
a person to ignore a crime boss planning on killing a kid. Rosie Perez is good
as Renee Montoya. She’s a hardworking detective that has been routinely screwed
over by her former partner, now captain, and seems to talk in 80s cop clichés.
Chris Messina is an interesting take on Victor Zsasz. This version is insanely
loyal to Roman Sionis, and goes to pretty extreme lengths to protect his boss
and follow orders. There are some implications that he might be in love with Sionis,
but the film doesn’t go too far into it. Oh yeah, turns out that big stink
people were throwing about the rumor that Sionis and Zsasz were gay put a whole
lot of energy being angry at something that didn’t really factor into the plot
at all. And do I even need to say that Ewen McGregor was great as Black Mask? Dude
was the best part of the prequel Star Wars and doesn’t disappoint here.
There’s a pretty great scene early on that I glossed over where Sionis were executing
a disrespectful associate and his family, where Sionis decides t o let the
daughter go… but changes his when he sees she has a gross snot bubble.
Perfectly exemplifies Sionis’ unstable nature me thinks, and Zsasz’s weird preference
for slicing off faces. Gross. I also liked Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra Cain. She’s
a girl that I could see grow into a Batwoman.
The bad isn’t movie breaking, but there.
There are a lot of forced emotional moments here. We’re supposed to feel really
bad about Harley’s Landlord Doc selling her out and her Hyena, Bruce, possibly
dying in the explosion that destroys her apartment. But both had just two
scenes each, and Doc only had one set of speaking lines. Kind of hard to feel the
betrayal when we barely know him. Bruce’s death fake-out is a little more
substantial, but that’s because I love animals, and Male hyena’s have it rough
enough as it is. They’re pretty much universally treated poorly by their female
pack members, for further details look things up on your own. Also, it seems
insane to me that, even as insane as Gotham can be, I just can’t imagine it
ever being so bad that a group of violent bikers could just walk into the police
station fully armed and just unload on people. Even at it’s worst, Gotham PD
wouldn’t stand for this stuff. They also go a very long time from the
introduction of Dinah Lance and the use of her powers. I legit thought they might
have forgotten about her hypersonic scream until it came up in the finale. And
I’m not sure why but the entire fill just felt really low budget. I can’t point
to anyone one thing, but it feels like Gotham has somehow become less grand
since it last appeared in the DCEU.
I was originally going to mention
the lack of Batman and Joker appearing at all in the bad section, but changed
my mind. Some other reviews I’ve seen since point out that this was most likely
in part intentional, as they wanted the story to focus on Harley and not be
distracted by Batman or Joker. I can respect that decision. Even if I know that
other half was probably due to the falling out that Warner Bros., Ben Affleck
and Jared Leto had with each other.
Also, I’m shocked to see that
Gotham has a daytime.
I’ll give this movie a B-. It’s not
the best Movie I’ve seen this year, but it’s worlds above some of the other
entrants into the DCEU. Birds of Prey kicks the ass out of Suicide
Squad. The cast is solid, like most of the DCEU, and the plot is simple but
effective. No need to wrap Harley’s story into some world shattering events, just
let her work out her relationship issues and help out a kid in trouble. Some
parts of the plot don’t really hold up, and there are parts that feel a bit cheap,
but that doesn’t ruin the experience for me personally. I’m hoping that this is
actually a sign that DC and Warner Bros. have finally started to get their act
together and are making DC movies that are as good as the actors in them. Got my
fingers crossed for it, anyway. Have a good night.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/34314745
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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