Harley Quinn’s solo outing is dark, violent, funny and full of neo-noir throwbacks.
A couple of years ago, when Michelle Pfeiffer was asked to comment on what she thought about her iconic character, the coke-addicted Elvira from the classic movie Scarface, she said something to the effect of how a movie role is able to do more for a cause or an issue simply by illustrating it in its purest form than by standing up on any kind of soapbox and preaching about it. The makers of Birds of Prey: The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (which includes star/producer Margot Robbie) realize this to a point with what is unarguably the first female-driven R-rated action movie. However, where Pfeiffer’s comments suggested a truthful way of being honest up front, Birds of Prey does everything but break the fourth wall in an effort to drive its point of misogyny running rampant throughout Gotham City. In any other movie, the point would be so exaggerated and overblown, that any hope of the film retaining credibility would be lost. But that’s one problem any movie featuring Harley Quinn never has to worry about.
Following the events of Suicide Squad, former psychiatrist turned maniacal Gotham City siren Harley Quinn (Robbie) has broken up with the Joker and is trying to start fresh after a suitable period of mourning has passed. However, it turns out that now that she’s a free agent, a number of dangerous men want her dead, with nightclub owner/mob boss Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) at the top of the list. It’s not long before Harley realizes that she must join forces with a jaded police detective (Rosie Perez), a pickpocket (Ella Jay Basco), an unknown assassin (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and a tough torch singer (Jurnee Smollett Bell- check) if she hopes to take on Roman and survive.
There’s plenty to appreciate about Birds of Prey, simply from a visual standpoint. The film is draped in a bright poppiness with flashes of neon and magenta visible in virtually every scene, from Harley’s eye-popping outfits, to the explosion she causes after blowing up the Ace Chemicals plant. It’s a great contrast to the darkness of the world Harley and the soon-to-be minted titular birds live in where they are constantly being undermined by the men surrounding them. Undermined being a a generous term. After Roman becomes annoyed by a female club-goer laughing too loudly, he insists that she stand on the table and dance for the club after demanding that the man she’s with cut her dress off of her. It’s a highly uncomfortable moment, but effective as all get out. That darkness extends to the movie’s violence, of which there is quite a lot of. The fights and subsequent death scenes are well-choreographed and hold virtually nothing back in their relentlessness, such as Huntress (Winstead) sliding down a funhouse slide, straddling a henchman as she stabs him repeatedly. But Birds of Prey miraculously finds a way of injecting some surprising humor into such scenes. After agreeing to spare the life of a teenage girl he intended to kill, Roman notices some post-nasal drip on his victim, resulting from her tearful, frightened state. Disgusted, Roman asks: “Is that a snot bubble,” before changing his mind and instructing his right-hand goon (Chris Messina) to kill her after all.
In a lot of ways, Birds of Prey feels like a neo-noir that’s been highly subverted. The morally grey but endlessly colorful Harley is as hard-boiled and gumshoe as anyone can be in a movie such as this. Her ability to decipher the world around her and rely on a set of instincts which seldom fail her, makes Harley Quinn a perfect variation on the classic noir protagonist. The movie’s architecture also speaks to the storytelling nature of the noir genre. There’s a bit of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing in the way the first half of the story is played out in fragments, with the vantage point of each of the key characters laid out in the most strategic and cinematic of ways. A connection between detective Rene Montoya (Perez) and Huntress is played out in the kind of fashion which is so jaw-droppingly impressive. Birds of Prey also manages to keep that great self-contained nature of Gotham as its own world with nothing and no one existing beyond it. In this world, it’s Harley and the birds versus the male-dominated toxicity, which Roman embodies so well. Their only chance at being able to exist in Gotham depends on taking him down. Interestingly enough, whether it’s the violence, the bright colors or the treatment of women, Birds of Prey continuously calls to mind Dick Tracy, another comic book movie stylized within an inch of its life. However while that movie was content to be a straight homage, Birds of Prey’s goals are far greater and rooted in something that remains all too real.
Robbie is as game as ever and seems to be having even more fun playing Harley than she did before. It shows. There’s something even more heightened and pronounced about the way the actress approaches the character this time around, amping up her movements, gestures and accent. You wouldn’t think a character this flamboyant could be taken up a few notches, but every scene here (especially one in which she approaches a desk sergeant at a police station with her accent flying from Brooklyn to Georgia direct) sees Harley taken even further. Still, only Robbie could make Harley and Birds of Prey work. The rest of the birds are better than their thinly-written characters, with Perez enjoying her best turn in some time and Winstead getting the chance to be wonderfully deadpan. Apart from Robbie, it’s McGregor who gives the movie’s most standout performance. His version of Roman contains a sort of showmanship and flair that the actor is able to quickly turn into a dark twistedness which is utterly chilling.
Birds of Prey is big on the girl power/shero factor, making nearly every female character capable of kicking ass. But sadly, none of them are fully developed as much as Harley is, reminding everyone that it’s her world and everyone else is simply living in it. You have to stop and laugh at the way Harley Quinn is being looked at as a villain in her own film. Sure, she’s more than proven worthy of the title in Suicide Squad and past iterations. In Birds of Prey, however, the title feels off. Perhaps it is because the movie borrows so many noirish tropes and turns them on their heads, but it’s hard to see Harley as anything other than an anti-hero. She isn’t out to take over the world in the movie or, like Roman, inflict any form of wrongdoing on anyone who doesn’t deserve it. At the risk of making another Pfeiffer reference, Harley is a lot like the former’s version of Catwoman in Batman Returns in how her actions were all part of a process which had to do with coming into her own as a woman and finding herself. The 90s feel of Birds of Prey (as well as its gloriously animated prologue) recall some of the panache of Tim Burton’s second and final DC effort stylistically, but also in its presenting of a female character whose methods and actions are the definition of reprehensible, but whose ideology is undeniably admirable.