After a scene-stealing turn in Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) gets her own feature to play. Not even her psychopathic lover, the Joker, can take the spotlight away from her- they’ve broken up. To ensure the audience knows upfront not to keep watch for “Mr. J,” Birds of Prey begins with a cutesy animated opening that explains Harleen Quinzel’s life story up through her broken love life. Without Joker’s protection, Harley’s amassed a lot of enemies ready to cash in on karma, so learning how to live on her own post-break-up has a dual meaning here. As she makes new friends and enemies, it becomes clear that girls’ night out for our favorite cheerful lunatic means bone-crunching bloodshed and violence to pair with her tacos and margaritas.
That’s just the basic setup. The actual plot, as the film unfurls it, is as convoluted and messy and Harley Quinn’s scattered brain. Director Cathy Yan jumps around haphazardly in time, from hours ago to weeks ago, and back, then to ‘80s Sicily for a measure, as she tries to introduce all of the players in this ladies ensemble. Harley might have center stage, but Dinah Lance/Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) isn’t far behind her. Lance happens to be an employee of the movie’s big bad, Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), but she’s also assisting Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) on the sly. Lance also has a bond with young neighbor Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), a pick-pocketing thief whose ways get her in way more trouble than she ever intended to find. Then there’s The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an intriguing but poorly handled character shoehorned into the plot. She deserves better.
Clunky plot and character work aside, Birds of Prey wants to make it abundantly clear that fun is on the menu. Keeping the frustrations of the plot at bay becomes a lot easier thanks to the cast’s performances and the multiple running gags that stick their landing. Robbie’s manic energy imbues life, but McGregor’s tongue-in-cheek flamboyant take on Sionis is a scene-stealer. Smollett-Bell’s soulful take on Black Canary gives us emotional rooting interest, and Winstead’s albeit far-too-short appearances show off endearing comedic chops. That doesn’t even touch upon the gags involving a breakfast sandwich, Huntress practicing her intro to bad guys in the mirror, or Harley being Harley when not in combat mode.
Despite the high level of fun, and the candy-coated style, Birds of Prey leans hard into its R-rating. This movie gets unexpectedly violent. Harley, a roller derby enthusiast, loves crunching bones. Adores it. Huntress is rather fond of stabbing and slaying with crossbows. Sionis is one ruthless big bad, primarily through his right-hand man Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), a sadistic creep with a penchant for skillfully skinning flesh. He’s a collector of faces in particular. The bubblegum pop-irreverence-meets-brutal-violence tone works far better than it should.
Eventually, the narrative finally ties all the players and plot threads together to deliver one satisfying finale. The set pieces, the energy, and the magnetic cast finally getting to play off each other as a dysfunctional unit makes you wish this came far earlier in the script. It’s so bloody and entertaining that it almost erases the flaws that came before. Almost. Satisfying finish or not, much of this story needed some extra finesse. Or maybe a lot of it. Fun gags aside, much of the first half feels empty and unnecessarily complicated. Most of the characters only feel like fleshed-out characters through the talent that plays them, as they aren’t given a lot of development or depth otherwise. The narrative structure seems to hint that the scattered telling is the fault of its unreliable narrator, but with an ensemble, that excuse becomes less believable.
Still, Harley and the gang bring a high-level of entertainment to the proceedings, and the surprising violence makes for a warm welcome in a superhero (or anti-heroine) flick. Sticklers for plot and character work will find themselves frustrated, but for those simply looking to enjoy tacos and bloodletting with a fun group of maniacs, Birds of Prey scratches that itch and then some. It offers up a disturbing cartoonish romp that brings enough thrills to elicit enough interest for the next ladies’ night.
