Birds of Prey and The Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn Review

Birds of Prey and The Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn Review

Image From Fandango

Robert Lewis Knuckles III

“Harley Shines on the Big Screen Once Again”

Back in 2016, DC released their first ever super villain film Suicide Squad, despite the film’s rough apprasiel only two characters stood out, and that’s Will Smith’s Deadshot, but the biggest star might arguably be Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. Fast forward to 2020 Robbie’s Harley Quinn returns to the big screen, and this time teaming up with the famous “The Birds of Prey” making this the first ever female superhero group film.

I want to start off with this review by talking about the title. It may say Birds of Prey, but this is in fact a Harley Quinn movie told by Harley herself, so fans that are looking for an actual Birds of Prey film might be disappointed. The film starts off with Harley giving the rundown on how her life started, thus leading up to the premise of the film with Harley breaking up with her ex boyfriend The Joker a.k.a Mr. J for good this time. Harley tries to find relief, but no matter what she does she can’t truly feel happiness until she comes up with a very Harleen idea by blowing the Chemical Plant, the place where she became the famous anti-hero. But by doing this, it tells all of Gotham that Harley and Joker are no longer together making it open season on her. 

One of those people that want Harley dead is the film's antagonist, Roman Sionis a.k.a the Black Mask played by Ewan McGregor. At first I thought McGregor was doing a good job having fun with the role being a bit of a comical villain, but later in the film he does some things that might make people feel uncomfortable, and have a different attitude towards him.

As I said before, Margot Robbie returns to play Harley Quinn and she does an amazing job. We see her struggle through a breakup, we see how she copes with the pain and we see her develop friendships with new people. This makes her character more relatable to the audience and that’s one of the most important things to have in a superhero film. These heroes and villains have powers, but you want to show the vulnerable side, and make them more human. This makes Robbie’s performance more impactful in this film than Suicide Squad.

The film later introduces the other characters such as Black Canary, the talented singer with deadly kicks played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Huntress, the crossbow anti-hero played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Renee Montoya, a great cop right out of a bad ‘80s movie and Cassandra Cain, a young pickpocketer played by Ella Jay Basco. The common thing that all these ladies have is the amount of screen time. Harley is the only person that gets the majority of it and rightfully so, since it’s her movie, but you would’ve loved to see the ladies share more time especially Huntress. It seemed like she got the short end of the stick with her screen time. I feel that some of their screen time was taking away due to the backtracking of the film. The backtracking was very time consuming and unnecessary. 

People might not know who the Birds of Prey are. They are a small female superhero team that consists of Batgirl/Oracle, Black Canary and later Huntress. Now of course every superhero film isn’t going to be the exact same story from their comic, but it was a little weird not seeing Batgirl/Oracle who’s practically the leader of the team, but my biggest issue where the film fails to correlate with the comic is Cassandra Cain. In the comic Cassandra is a very little spoken badass fighter that protects the streets of Gotham. She’s so powerful that even Batman fears her. Sadly we see none of that in the film. We get the exact opposite of Cassandra and it’s very disappointing.  

The film does have a couple of shining moments, and that’s the action. One of the action scenes is the police raid with Harley Quinn. We see our girl doing her thing bashing the cops with the bat, using her athletic skills to dodge attacks and using a non-lethal grenade launcher that fires blue/pink/purple rounds making it more Harleyesch. The fight scene towards the end of the movie was another golden moment. It was great seeing the lovely ladies kick some ass, and using a bit of team chemistry. It might’ve not been the perfect choreographed fight, but it was still enjoyable to watch.  

When it comes to female superheroes I’m a huge fan, so when I heard that we’re getting a Birds of Prey movie featuring Harley Quinn I was excited, despite the rough trailers. Having said all that, my biggest worry coming into this film was how are the men going to be portrayed in this film? Are they going to be viewed as the bad guys? Are all the women in the film going to be portrayed as the good guys in this film? Sadly the film goes that route. Now I don't think director Cathy Yan and the cast believe that all men are bad, but Birds of Prey kind of paints them in that picture. 

In the end, with all the negatives things said about the film, I still believe Birds of Prey and The Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn is a decent movie. This movie has some good laughs, great action and a strong female cast. Not only strong, but very well diversed. I really appreciate Margot introducing lesser known heroes to the big screen. Now of course you have people that know Black Canary, Huntress, Renee Montoya and Cassandra Cain, but movies are always the best way to introduce new characters, and with that you’ll see fans cosplaying as these characters, showing how big of an impact the movie has made. I feel that female superhero movies are on the right track, and I can't see what the future holds for them.