Birds of Prey
Nearly four years ago, Margot Robbie’s Gotham villainess Harley Quinn was introduced in the abysmal Suicide Squad, where writer/director David Ayer devoted more screen time to her derrière than to character development.
That toxic male gaze is thankfully absent in Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey, but the sloppy writing and shoddy filmmaking remain intact and do further disservice to what’s increasingly becoming a one-note role.
Things get off to a bumpy start with a visually rough, expository animated sequence — perfect for viewers who skipped Suicide Squad or deleted it from their brains in the interim — that hints at the flat humor and poorly-executed, excessive violence to come.
A busy blend of would-be cheeky voiceover, fourth-wall breaking, and info told via flashy Squad-like graphics, the script from Christina Hodson (Bumblebee; Unforgettable) finds Harley newly broken up with The Joker and hesitant to make that information public, seeing as it means her immunity is void and the many, many people she’s wronged can at last seek revenge.
When word inevitably gets out, Birds of Prey launches into a tired, repetitive cycle of goons attacking Harley and her defeating them in ridiculously easy, frequently accidental, and aggressively gruesome manners, all lensed by a filmmaker with little sense for imaginative action.
Along the way, an actual story starts to take shape, involving nefarious crime boss Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) and his obsessive quest for the valuable Bertinelli diamond, which was stolen by teenage pickpocket Cassandra Cain (relative newcomer Ella Jay Basco).
Revealed through extended flashbacks that arise after Harley realizes the onscreen event at hand makes no sense to the uninformed, the plot is easy to follow and reflective of our narrator’s scatterbrained nature, but the chopped chronology disrupts what minimal narrative flow the film had established up to that point and proves more of a distraction than a stylistic enhancement.
Other half-baked characters in pursuit of Cassandra include cliché cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), hooded, crossbow assassin The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and nightclub singer turned Sionis chauffeur, Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell).
With the exception of Chris Messina as Sionis’ sadistic right-hand man Victor Zsasz, who’s fully-formed and menacing within his first lines, the lack of guidance from behind the camera leaves each performer on his or her own island, alone to figure out the character with seemingly no feedback or workshopping, which results in amateurish, uncommitted decisions.
Perhaps following Robbie’s example, McGregor is merely a caricature of a criminally insane person and, though alluded to earlier on, his sudden donning of the Black Mask “disguise” feels tacked on and unnecessary — much like one member of the titular crew suddenly unleashing her superpower at a crucial moment when said ability was barely hinted at.
Winstead’s supremely gifted, yet verbally unconfident Huntress is likewise a victim of clunky writing and hands-off direction, delivering failed awkward comedy in the vein of Chris Pine in Wonder Woman.
The biggest letdown of Birds of Prey, however, may be that the all-female group is together for at most 10 minutes — and even then, it’s in a forgettable jumble of noisy, haphazardly-staged fights and car chases. Similar to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it’s more of an origin story for the ensemble and a set-up for future adventures as a unit (and, presumably, individually), but if such films get green-lit and they’re anything like Yan’s effort, revisiting these characters is a thoroughly unappealing prospect.
Grade: D-plus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC Classic, Biltmore Grande, and Carolina Cinemark
(Photo: Warner Bros.)
