Birds of Prey Movie Evaluate: Charismatic Margot Robbie Gives Harley Quinn Her Wings

Director: Cathy Yan

At one level in “Birds of Prey,” crime lord Roman Sionis, aka Ewan McGregor, sits down with a bathtub of popcorn to look at Harley Quinn endure via a brutal interrogation.

He’s a psychopath — neatly, so is Harley, for that subject — however Roman has the correct concept. As portrayed through the without difficulty charismatic Margot Robbie, Harley’s at all times gonna be essentially the most fascinating particular person within the room — or at the display screen. Snatch your popcorn, certainly.

Robbie is undoubtedly killing it nowadays, and we’re no longer simply speaking in regards to the escalating frame depend (particularly in case you come with violence through glitter gun) on this visually arresting and ceaselessly artful — if no longer in particular profound — installment of the DC Prolonged Universe. Heartbreaking in “Bombshell” and poignant in “As soon as Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” Robbie is having a look an increasing number of like she will do maximum the rest. And she or he’s a manufacturer right here, too, as though being a ginormous film famous person at age 29 weren’t sufficient.

However again to “Birds of Prey,” or extra exactly, “Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),” a longer identify that hints at what Robbie, director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hodson are looking to do: loose Harley as soon as and for all from her ex-boyfriend, that Joker man, and plant her firmly inside of a woman gang.

And despite the fact that the Joker is all of the rage nowadays, because of Joaquin Phoenix in that different film, Harley proves a worthy topic of her personal movie, particularly together with her intriguing background (a PhD and possibly a clinical stage), her damaged previous, and her “obsessive-compulsive want for consideration,” in her phrases. It’s a disgrace the film doesn’t dig deeper into some of those idiosyncratic intricacies of persona — however hi there, there’s at all times the sequel.

You don’t want a lot earlier wisdom to stand up to hurry, because of a artful animated intro, narrated through Harley (in a less-than-convincing Brooklyn-Gotham accessory, it will have to be mentioned). Born Harleen Quinzel, Harley changed into a shrink simplest to fall in love with Mr J at Arkham, proving as soon as once more that complex levels aren’t any coverage towards unhealthy style in boyfriends.

Because the motion starts, Harley has been given the boot through her mercurial lover. “I treated it actual mature,” she notes with sarcasm. Revenge is topmost on her thoughts. She comes to a decision to explode the Ace Chemical substances Processing Plant, a spot essential to the Joker, simply as some other folks “have their Eiffel Tower, or their Olive Lawn.”

Harley briefly learns byproduct of her new singledom is that she’s now not shielded through other folks’s worry of the Joker — in different phrases, everybody she ever slighted is now out to get her. And the ones slights, we be told in a witty, lightning-quick graphic, come with the whole thing from possessing a feminine reproductive organ to — did we catch this proper? — vote casting for Bernie, possibly towards Hillary.

Maximum dangerously, her new enemies come with Roman and his sadistic assistant, Zsasz (Chris Messina). Roman likes to hold other folks the other way up and order their faces scalped off, however in McGregor’s wry efficiency, he’s lower than terrifying, particularly in comparison to Zsasz who’s really, deeply creepy.

With out going too a ways into plot right here — the film’s identify stretched our phrase depend, anyway — let’s simply briefly point out that issues truly get going when younger pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) steals after which swallows a treasured diamond, wherein the most important secrets and techniques are embedded. Harley gives to get the diamond; another way, Roman will kill her.

The opposite main avid gamers, becoming a member of forces to combat Roman, are Montoya, a tricky Gotham detective (the dependable Rosie Perez); Black Canary, or singer Dinah Lance (a beautiful Jurnee Smollett-Bell); and the Huntress, aka Helena Bertinelli (an understated Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a mob daughter bent on avenging her circle of relatives’s killers.

In the end all of it rides on Robbie, who, together with her blond, color-dipped pigtails, brings an interesting mix of looniness and grit to the position, and a touch of one thing sadder and darker. Nonetheless, one will get the sense the filmmakers weren’t moderately certain how a ways to move with the feminism factor. When she says unfortunately that “a harlequin’s not anything with out a grasp,” you don’t instantly get the sense that it is a publish #MeToo Harley Quinn.

Like we mentioned, there’s at all times the sequel.

“Birds of Prey,” a Warner Bros Photos free up, is rated R through the Movement Image Affiliation of The us “for sturdy violence and language all the way through, and a few sexual and drug subject material.”

Operating time: 109 mins

Score: three/five

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