BIRDS OF PREY: AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN (2020) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

Birds of prey: and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn (2020) movie

Genre              |   Action Adventure

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   109 minutes

Released         |   6 February 2020

cast

Margot Robbie ... Harley Quinn
Mary Elizabeth Winstead ... Helena Bertinelli / Huntress
Ewan McGregor ... Black Mask
Jurnee Smollett-Bell ... Dinah Lance / Black Canary
Bojana Novakovic ... Erika
Chris Messina ... Victor Zsasz
Rosie Perez ... Renee Montoya
Charlene Amoia ... Maria Bertinelli
Matthew Willig ... Happy
​Greice Santo ... Scantily Clad Crystal

director

Cathy Yan

writer

​Christina Hodson ... (written by)

cinematographer

​Matthew Libatique ... director of photography

music

​Daniel Pemberton

film editor

​Jay Cassidy ... (edited by)
Evan Schiff ... (edited by)

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box office result

Worldwide               $250 million

Australia                 $10 million

North America        $100 million

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movie minutiae

Being produced under the working title of "Fox Force Five." Fox Force Five was the name of a fictional television show that never made it past the production of its pilot in the movie PULP FICTION (1994).

Margot Robbie pitched the idea of BIRDS OF PREY to DC and Warner Bros. as a female-led superhero action movie and they agreed with her vision. "I think there's a perception that a PG female-led action film is kind of considered a chick flick," says Robbie, which is why we're going to see an R-rated version of the story. In addition to starring in the upcoming movie, Robbie is also on board as producer with her LuckyChap production company, so her hands are all over the project. BIRDS OF PREY is LuckyChap's largest project to date at $75 million.

This is a spin-off of a character originally created as a love interest for the Joker, a character previously played by Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamill. Ewan McGregor has another connection to both actors. Mark Hamill played Luke Skywalker jn the original STAR WARS trilogy, while McGregor played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the prequels. Nicholson appeared in THE SHINING (1980), while McGregor appeared in the sequel, DOCTOR SLEEP (2019).

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BIRDS OF PREY: AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN (2020) MOVIE IMAGES

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BIRDS OF PREY: AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANICIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN (2020) STORY SYNOPSIS

​After splitting with the Joker, Harley Quinn joins superheroes Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya to save a young girl from an evil crime lord, Black Mask in Gotham City.

BIRDS OF PREY: AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN (2020) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 15 February 2020

Pop ​Movee Rating

BIRDS OF PREY AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN is not only an exhausting title to read; the movie itself is a 109 minute exercise in how to wear out all the goodwill that Margot Robbie managed to generate out of the mess that was David Ayer’s 2016 SUICIDE SQUAD.

The premise is solid enough.

Harley Quinn, the Joker’s untouchable girlfriend, finally falls out with him for good. Without his protection, Harley is forced to account for all the bad things she’s done and fend for herself.

There’s plenty of good material to mine, especially when it’s set against the backdrop of the DC comic book universe and the myriad characters that could be used to tell a cautionary tale of redemption.

Somewhere in Christina Hodson’s screenplay that story exists. Hodson demonstrated with her 2018 BUMBLEBEE script that she knows how to deconstruct a franchise and turn out a story that adds new depth to a series that  many believed had otherwise done everything it could do.

The big problem with BIRDS OF PREY is not the premise, or even what has been filmed, it’s the manner in which it’s been assembled in the editing suite.

Director Cathy Yan shows plenty of visual flair throughout but, in terms of her filmmaking resume, is inexperienced in handling a film of this scale and it’s clear that BIRDS OF PREY lost its way in the editing process.

BIRDS OF PREY feels like the kind of film that was going in one direction and then the Warner Bros. management got a hold of it after Yan had finished her cut of the film and tried to take it in a completely different direction.

The finished product feels very much like SUICIDE SQUAD. In a word “uneven”.

The film’s Editors, Jay Cassidy and Evan Schiff, are, by no means, inexperienced. In recent times, between them, they’ve worked on films such as:

A STAR IS BORN (2018), FURY (2014), AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013), JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM (2019) and JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (2017).

These guys are Award-nominated, highly regarded Film Editors.

So, why has BIRDS OF PREY turned out the way it has?

Only those inside the production will really ever know the truth, but, it seems, there were an awful lot of cooks in the kitchen.

The first half of the film is a complete shambles.

The film uses Robbie’s Harley to provide an ongoing narration to help clarify plot progression.
 
In the majority of cases, this is always a bad sign.

Given film is a visual medium, the need for a character to provide a running commentary indicates a nervousness on the part of the filmmakers.

Perhaps it’s the DEADPOOL factor…

There are similarities between Deadpool and Harley Quinn in terms of their reckless disregard for just about everything. 

Both DEADPOOL movies were very successful at allowing that character to break the “Fourth Wall” and let the plot skip around in order to convey the chaos that envelopes him wherever he goes. BIRDS OF PREY attempts this in a much more timid manner and fails.

For those who have seen the DEADPOOL movies and then see BIRDS OF PREY, it won’t take too long to work out that Ryan Reynolds’ “Merc With The Mouth” was both the creative and commercial inspiration for this film. Even the pursuit of a hard ‘R’ rating in the US ( MA 15+ in Australia) is taken directly from the approach that Reynolds took with DEADPOOL. 

What is different between BIRDS OF PREY and DEADPOOL is how the film’s were brought to the attention of moviegoers.

Reynolds took a very unconventional approach, transforming himself into the character for an extended period in the lead-up to the first film’s release. By the time DEADPOOL launched, the character had become a pop culture icon thanks to the tireless efforts of the film’s star.

Awareness of the character allowed the film to make mistakes but get away with them because the audience was focussed on Reynolds.

Harley Quinn does not have the same pop culture awareness.

Yes, Margot Robbie’s performance in the 2016 SUICIDE SQUAD film was a highlight, but neither she nor Warner Bros. has invested anywhere near the same amount of time as Reynolds in building BIRDS OF PREY or Harley Quinn as a must-see for audiences.

Just because a stack of people dress up like the character at comic book conventions, it doesn’t guarantee Box Office success for a film.

Warner Bros. should know this. They’ve just had a huge success with JOKER, but no one seemed to take that film’s success as guaranteed. JOKER was carefully positioned well ahead of its release and the communication remained 100% focussed on Joaquin Phoenix as the titular character. The result is one of the all-time best feature film adaptations of a comic book character.

In the first half of the film, BIRDS OF PREY, by way of Harley’s narration, attempts to achieve everything that the film’s marketing should have done before moviegoers even set foot inside the cinema. 

The story starts off in one direction and then, after several set pieces, comes to a complete halt as Harley announces to the audience that she wants to back everything up and start the story much earlier than point where the actual film starts. (As mentioned above, BIRDS OF PREY copies a lot of what DEADPOOL (2016) did… Even the running times are the same, but that may just be coincidence.)

This narrative “interference” from Harley is one of the film’s biggest problems.

For some reason, everyone connected with the making of this film seems to think that the audience are happy just to be “in” on Harley’s transformational journey.

Margot Robbie is a great actress, but, as Harley Quinn, she makes no effort to connect with the audience in any meaningful way. Winking at the camera is no substitute for creating a character that the viewer cares about, and that’s the problem with Harley...

The audience doesn't care about her. She’s a terrible person. Her dilemma is a product of her own making because she’s been so awful and so weak (under the influence of Joker).

Robbie’s Harley is not the only problematic character.

Ewen McGregor’s villain - Roman Sionis - is all over the place. The character’s alter-ego, Black Mask, first appeared in the DC comic book universe back in 1985, but the BIRDS OF PREY version of the character lacks any backstory to explain how or why he is the way he is. The absence of backstory reduces the character to a plot device whose presence is designed to test Harley’s survival skills and, from time-to-time throughout the film, divert attention to the story’s threadbare theme that “men are no good”.

Perhaps that’s the biggest problem with BIRDS OF PREY…

The story wants to make a statement about empowerment, but the character making the statement has not earned the right to take the supporting characters or the audience on that journey.

The result is a confused film that relies too heavily on stylistic flair to overcome its poor editorial construction and lacks a heroine that energises audience enthusiasm for the greater cause.

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BIRDS OF PREY: AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANICIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN MOVIE (2020) USEFUL LINKS

Birds of Prey (2020 film) - Wikipedia
​Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One ...
​Birds of Prey - Rotten Tomatoes

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