Harley Quinn joins forces with a singer, an assassin and a police detective to help a young girl who had a hit placed on her after she stole a rare diamond from a crime lord.
This cinematic universe’s current track record had me anxious for this film for all the right and wrong reasons and as much as I want to oppose to the contrary, I do believe “Birds Of Prey” is another SLIGHT step in the right direction for the DCEU but is it’s not without a few bones of contention. I think the biggest thing that holds this movie back is how it tries to have its cake and eat it too.
A good half of the action sequences looked obviously rehearsed and not very authentic, as well as look and feel repetitive despite its rather stunning choreography, half the jokes didn’t land, the pacing is heavily sloppy, going fast one minute and dragging to that of a snails pace the next, the story is a bog-standard lesser-mans version of Snatch centered around two-dimensional protagonists with a one-dimensional antagonist, there isn’t much characterization that follows from either Black Mask of any of the other Birds Of Prey as a result because Harley’s the hogging all the spotlight, the Birds Of Prey are basically sidelined in their own movie and aren’t given much to work with, the films non-linear structure while unique and innovating keeps placing the story in all the wrong places since the tropes that it plays off of comes back to bite it in the ass with little to no stakes or emotional weight and all of this combined heavily halts any of the momentum this film DOES build up. Acting is easily a solid “A”, most action sequences are done fairly enough, the film is pretty to look at as the bright color scheme and hue and tints in the settings really give it that extra pop, whatever jokes do work landed hard and were funny, it lives up to its R-rating, the soundtrack is admittedly a bop and a part of me likes how they took Harley’s character as far as the narrative structure and direction goes.....
This 8th installment wanted to be different and, don’t get me wrong, it is. It feels remotely different in its atmosphere and execution and succeeds at separating itself from the rest of the crowd but like it was said before in the past, different doesn’t automatically equal good. It has fun with itself a lot and compared to Suicide Squad, it’s easily the better film of the two, taking care of all the mechanical issues and feeling less like an unfinished college project. But now I’m left asking “What’s next?”
