Film Review - Birds of Prey (2020)

Birds of Prey is the newest DC film and again sees Margot Robbie play Harley Quinn who has now well and truly called things off with Mr J aka the Joker and is now out on her own but she runs afowl of Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) also known as the Black Mask when a Diamond containing vital information for his criminal empire goes missing but Harley isn’t the only heroine in Gotham City.

Birds of Prey in terms of Ms Robbie’s portrayal of Harley Quinn is a major step up from what it was in Suicide Squad back in 2016 which was stuck in a movie I consider one of the 5 worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life, she fully commits to this role and her performance here sticks the landing and stands out way better than it did in that dreadful film.

Also good in this movie is Ms Rosie Perez and it is great to see her in a movie again after her breakout roles in the early 90s like Peter Weir’s Witness and the Wesley Snipes/Woody Harrelson comedy White Men Can’t Jump, also enjoyable is Ms Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the Huntress and I enjoyed her getting in on the action and Mr McGregor is good fun as the Black Mask.

But sadly I didn’t quite love this movie all that much, don’t get me wrong I think its perfectly fine and okay to watch but the films tone for my eyes was way too scattershot to really get into the movie overall, one the one hand its constantly winking at the camera, doing the 4th wall breaking, there’s a lot of voiceover narration yet it also wants to be serious about Harley breaking it off with the Joker and Renee Montoya the police detective that Ms Perez plays wanting to be taken seriously in her job among other things.

And this wild variance of tone just put me off after a while and there’s some fun action particularly a bust inside a police station or the climax showdown with Black Mask which was pretty neat but the cartoonishness of it all just didn’t work for me all that much but maybe that’s just me and one day I’d like to see one of these movies really go for the full R18+ rating and really bring in a genuinely dark tone where there is little room for laughs or jokes or 4th wall breaking for all of the faults that Joker and the Zack Snyder tone had (and the Snyder tone had a lot of faults) at least the darkness of those films felt genuine but we all know how that played out now don’t we.

And so that was Birds of Prey and there is fun to be had performance and action wise but the humour and the overreliance on it really bothered me and its increasingly bothering me with many big movies nowadays, 2 out of 5.