Birds of Prey review

To whomever put money on Warner Bros’ Suicide Squad movie getting not just a sequel (of sorts), but a damn good one, congratulations. Nobody walked away from the dreary super villain team up looking very good, although I do remember thinking Margot Robbie had a little bit of promise as long time DC comics villain Harley Quinn. Well over the last few years Robbie has been working away as a producer on her own spin off / sequel / girl gang flick that arrived this week as Birds of Prey, and wouldn’t you just know it, it’s a damn good time.
   
Robbie’s original pitch has been written for the screen by Christina Hodson and directed by relative newcomer Cathy Yan, both of whom display serious chops in the mid-budget action comedy genre. Birds of Prey is a punchy, lively, aesthetically supercharged blast of feel-good girl power that bounces along while staying rooted in serious character growth. It has the kind of unapologetic confidence that comes when filmmakers genuinely care about the story their telling and have real ideas to communicate within it. The superhero stuff is a fun icing rather than the entire stodgy cake.

The actual plot is far too tangled to describe here but the basic set up is Harley Quinn has broken up with long term abusive boyfriend the Joker (not the one currently at the Oscars) and is trying to get her groove back. In the process she makes a group of new friends, a ton of new enemies, and works through the trauma bestowed upon her by a bunch of men in order to find some self-worth. There’s a lot of cops-and-robbers busywork going on around her but the emotional core is rock solid; the bonding of the titular Birds through their similar histories is cathartic without being overbearing. 

Aside from all the modern edged feminism and balletic action, what I like the most is how fun and alive Gotham city feels. There always seems to be multiple chases, shootouts, brawls and explosions happening simultaneously all over the city, giving it the freewheeling energy of some of the classic comics, or a Grand Theft Auto game. The danger is pretty real for our heroines, but the audience is allowed to revel in the anarchic action without having to solemnly contemplate every totalled car or helpless bystander. You get the sense the streets are rebuilt magically quickly in this universe, just in time for the next misadventure to come barrelling down them and wreck everything all over again.  

As far as the casting goes everyone knows the type of movie they’re in and has fun playing the archetypes, especially Ewan McGregor as the big bad, but Robbie is the true standout. She clearly has a great time playing this character and has found a way to connect her to something meaningful in female comradery. It’s Robbie who pushed for this story despite the toxic radiation left on her from Suicide Squad, and she deserves all the credit in the world for getting a superhero film with this much heart and gusto to the screen. I sincerely hope we get to see more of her version of the DC universe and the fantabulous world of Harley Quinn.           

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uncut Gems review

Uncut Gems made my top ten of 2019 list which was a little surprising as I didn’t like it anywhere near as much as I had been led to believe I would. It’s a testament to the films greatness then that I still do think of it as great, the best example yet of Josh and Benny Safdie’s take on the slimy, sketchy, pulse raising underbelly of New York. The film thrusts us into the sparkling hurricane of a life of Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), a diamond district adrenaline addict who gets his fix by making a series of increasingly ludicrous and high stakes bets, hedges and parlays. To be honest that might not be the exact right terminology, but the movie isn’t really concerned with the technicalities either, hand waving the jargon and giving Howard a clear sequence of tasks to complete no matter how convoluted the specifics.       This is the movies great trick, to create a sense of whirling, fast paced chaos whilst never letting the audience lose sight of what need...
Read more

Little Women review

Greta Gerwig has been on the promotional trail in the last few weeks talking about her second solo feature, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s landmark 1868 novel Little Women. I would encourage listening to as many of her interviews as possible, the longer the better, as they provide the best insight as to how and why her sophomore effort is as magnificent as it is. Interviews with filmmakers are often not as interesting or insightful as you want them to be, with many giving vague or over rehearsed answers to questions they’ve heard hundreds of times before; this is not the case with Gerwig. She has been passionate, generous and articulate in describing her relationship with the novel and the various choices she made in adapting it. She can provide in depth reasoning for every narrative and filmmaking decision, displaying an intelligence that makes her ascension as one of Hollywood’s top talents seem retroactively inevitable and totally deserved. The film she has made refl...
Read more

The Northman

  Everything about The Northman is supersized: the muscles, the action, the budget, and for filmmaker Robert Eggers, the stakes. The Norse epic represents a significant step up onto the worlds stage for a director previously responsible for niche little indie genre flicks, decent hits in and of themselves, but free of the expectations a near $100 million budget will bring. The last ten years have seen many indie breakouts like Eggers suddenly catapulted to box office juggernaut status off the back of just one or two films (Colin Trevorrow, Taika Waititi, Etc) and almost all have lost their creative soul in the process, delivering branded content (TM) studio noted to unintelligible blandness. The supersized risk of The Northman lies in how much it feels like an Eggers film, only bigger. An Eggers film, for those uninitiated, means a semi-mythic period piece dripping with exhaustively researched historical detail, down to the tiniest, grimiest piece of fastidious production desig...
Read more