![]() It’s rated R.From start to finish Birds of Prey was a wild ride, led by the amazing Margot Robbie as Harleen Quinzel AKA Harley Quinn. “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn” premieres Feb. But the net result – even with the abundant appeal of its star – is a movie with feet of clay. “Birds of Prey” will be welcomed by some for its irreverent style and visual energy. (A short-lived 2002 TV series with the same title was actually more fun.) Ultimately, the flightless “Birds” offers plenty of flash but precious little substance, yielding a film that can’t consistently get off the ground. The shortcomings exist despite the valiant efforts of the cast, with Robbie vamping it up as Harley – including a fleeting homage to Marilyn Monroe – and McGregor lustily chewing through scenery as the over-the-top villain, also known as the Black Mask. Still, those action scenes – while plentiful – aren’t staged with much imagination, and a steady diet of blunt-object blows to the head and kicks to the groin eventually becomes more numbing than exciting. “Nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence,” Harley tells a young thief (Ella Jay Basco) who gets drawn into the larger plot, an amusing line of dialogue that actually betrays a bit too much about the film’s underlying mindset. (The studio is part of WarnerMedia, as is CNN.) surely see a niche – a point of differentiation from Marvel – in R-rated fare, and “Birds of Prey” leans into that and then some. The vibe, rather, is less reminiscent of that, or even “Joker,” than the garish Joel Schumacher-directed Batman movies of the 1990s, only with a near-relentless barrage of bone-crunching mayhem.Īfter the box-office success of “Joker,” DC and Warner Bros. ![]() Black Canary, who brawls as well as she sings.ĭirected by Cathy Yan from a script by Christina Hodson, “Birds of Prey” is the latest DC superhero with a female pedigree, but any similarities to “Wonder Woman” end there. In fact, she looks positively reasonable compared to many of the town’s denizens, including Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), a ruthless crime boss whose right-hand henchman, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), derives pleasure from peeling off victims’ faces.Įlsewhere, there’s a driven cop (Rosie Perez) on Sionis’s tail a vigilante assassin who goes by the name Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and wields a mean crossbow and the talented Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), a.k.a. Harley, however, isn’t Gotham’s only violent psychopath. J,” as she prefers), fell for him and became his main squeeze.Ī bad breakup has left Harley alone and exposed, with plenty of people bearing grudges (or “grievances,” which flash across the screen) and eager to exact a measure of revenge. Part of that has to do with jumping around as it juggles an assortment of characters, finally bringing them together in what feels like a belated bid for a sequel.Īs for the “emancipation” part, the movie begins with the lovelorn Harley recounting her history via an animated sequence, explaining how she met the Joker (or “Mr. The too-cute subtitle, “And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn,” underlines the cheeky tone to which the film aspires and doesn’t fully sustain. That’s true again with “Birds of Prey,” which moves the Joker’s sadistic sidekick front and center, then proceeds to assault the senses in much the way its protagonist wields a baseball bat. In “Suicide Squad,” Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was the best part of a bad movie.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |