Birds of Prey: Fun, Scary, Action-Packed But Not For Kids

Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is an amazing, fast-paced action comedy set in a DC comics setting. This movie could easily stand on its own, so you should not feel pressured to see the rest of the DC cinematic universe first. However, this movie is definitely here to start something new, namely the Birds of Prey team. This movie does star the characters in the Birds of Prey comic as the title would suggest, but Harley Quinn is the main character and focus.

Right at the start our narrator and main character, Harley Quinn, gives you a complete and slightly new backstory for herself. Although it hits many of the more recent backstory beats, her childhood in this movie is different from that of any other Harley origin out there. From there she catches us right up to the present. At this point, the rest of the Birds of Prey team really has not come up. You see them a little through her beginning narration, but Harley Quinn is the focus of this story. The other characters are on screen and do get to shine, but she is the focus of this movie.

There are two movies that came to mind while I was watching Birds of Prey. The first was Kill Bill (v1 and v2). The Bride is the main character. You get her back story, you get her narration, and she is on the screen most of the movie. Harley in this analogy is The Bride. In the Kill Bill movies, every now and again you get scenes that follow one of the other Deadly Vipers. The Birds of Prey team characters are like that. We get a lot of either screen time or backstory but not both. Although this might disappoint some Birds of Prey only fans, I think a better way to think about this is that this is only the first movie. They left a lot of room for these ladies to have their own movie, and yes without Harley Quinn.

The other movie this made me think of was Snatch. In Snatch, there are a lot of moving parts that all come together in a really satisfying way, and Birds of Prey also has the same sort of pacing. You get to walk around with Detective Renee Montoya for a while, or follow Dinah Lance and see some different perspectives of the same events at the same time.

The real villains
Now we come to our big bads. Black Mask, Roman Sionis, is the main bad guy, however Mr. Zsasz is also quite present. Mr. Zsasz is your Hannibal Lecter-type serial killer. In the comics they often leave him completely locked up in Arkham with just his mouth free. Even that was enough in his first appearance, Shadow of the Bat #1-4, to completely warp the mind of Jeremiah Arkham into letting him continue his grim work of killing people and staging them in familial settings, then tallying up the body count on his own body. All other on screen depictions of Zsasz have been completely lackluster. In the Nolan trilogy, he has a cameo appearance as a thug, and nothing more. In the Gotham series, he is seen more but again just hired help. In Birds of Prey, he was finally given some justice. He is often whispering in Roman’s ear and making every situation that much more brutal. That is the Victor Zsasz we were waiting for. The horrible psychopathic manipulator, and necessary servant.

All that said about Zsasz, I can now get into Black Mask. I have never been creeped out by Ewan McGregor. But holy moly, I am now and boy did he kill it. This was a character as creepy as Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. He did an amazing job of creating a unique and unredeemable monster. He was paranoid, cruel, and utterly narcissistic. This does however get into our R rating and why I do not think you should bring the little ones to this movie. Deadpool was rated R, and was rather violent but also there was a lot of sex, swearing, and casual drug use. Still, I saw quite a few kids in the theater. Birds of Prey does not have the sex, does have a lot of swearing and casual drug use, but the R rating comes from the violence. Black Mask and Mr. Zsasz brutally carve up some people. Also, there is a very triggering scene, where Black Mask humiliates a random woman he perceived was laughing at him, and causes everyone to cry. That scene in particular is hard to watch as an adult. Please consider these things before bringing your kid to this movie. When I was ten years old, I wanted nothing more than to see Batman Returns in theaters. Now as an adult I am very happy I did get to see it then. However, ten year old me that night was scared to sleep because the Penguin was rounding up children. Completely unreasonable fear, but that is a child for you. I know they will really want to go, and everyone loves Harley Quinn and wants to dress up as her, but wait for the video and skip those scenes if you can or be there to explain some messed up stuff.

Cosplay potentials
Now I could not finish this review without speaking to the cosplay angle, so let’s dive in. Harley has about ten different outfits throughout the movie. Most of these outfits are very quickly seen and then gone, on screen for maybe 10 seconds. She has about four outfits that you see her in the most, the party star outfit, the ribbon jacket, the harley freakin quinn shirt, and the gold overalls. So far the latter three are all commercially available, (although inaccurate in minor ways). There is only one cosplay shirt commercially available so far that is a non Harley cosplay which Renee has on when she gets her normal clothes trashed. Black Canary had about three outfits, and I have yet to see any commercially available. This is really a shame because Black Canary has some really kicking outfits. The print on her pants and Roman’s suits is unique and rather stylish, and Roman had quite a few neat suits. Huntress had some hilarious ’90s Italian tracksuits in her back story, and a pretty interesting look through the movie. At the end they all finally get something a little more like the classic comic look but it is only on screen for less than a minute. Cassandra Cain had some interesting casual looks but because she is basically that character in name only, she mostly just wears normal clothing that gets a little flashier at the end.

For me this was the most disappointing part of Birds of Prey — Cassandra Cain being nothing like in the comics. That said, as a character in the movie, in this universe, she was fine and likeable. She is pretty much just a punk teen though, thrown to the mercy of the foster system, turning to a life of petty crime and pickpocketing, so basically Catwoman’s origin story minus the gymnastic training. No assassin parents, no weird silent upbringing to create the perfect assassin, no martial arts, just a girl. I would not be counting on a batsuit anywhere in her future.

Now I hope my comics versus movies talk and content warnings have not soured you at all to this movie, which is really fun and wild. The action and stunts are amazing. They did not sleep at all on Black Canary and she was a total powerhouse. There are quite a few really fun fight scenes in some really creative places. The set design in some scenes is utterly wild, with bizarre fun colors. They also do a good job of keeping it very Gotham, which you can see some of old Gotham towards the end of the film. 

So keep in mind that these warnings and criticism are notes from examining the film, but not what stood out overall. And if you kick back and enjoy where they take you, then it should be a great ride.

I give Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (DC Entertainment; R; 1hr 49mins) a 5 out 5.