By Jessica Lau
After Margot Robbie’s success as Harley Quinn on Suicide Squad, a chaotic mallet swinging fighter who fell madly in love with the Joker. She finally landed herself her own individual movie along with her own group of a dysfunctional girl gang. Birds Of Prey And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn directed by Cathy Yan delivers Harley Quinn onto a journey of self-discovery. After breaking up with the Joker, with no one to protect her and many targets on her back who is she?
Who is Harley Quinn?
Despite the mixed reviews and certain viewers complaining about this movie, this movie was a blast for me. The start of the movie opens up with a series of animations describing how Harley was born and her relationships, we learned Harley is bisexual and that opens a gateway for Poison Ivy to come in. When I was reading the comics, I especially love the relationship between Poison Ivy and Harley.
Every time Harley gets beaten Poison Ivy would tend to her and their relationship bloomed. The little details in this movie had me sold, Harley Quinn is an established Olympic level gymnast in her fight scenes we could see the aerobatics in play. Her fighting style is fascinating to watch, many people underestimate Harley, because she is small and doesn’t have the strength guys do but that’s where their mistake is.
This film shows how she uses her aerobatics and her speed to avoid some guy’s attacks and turn their own attacks on them. Song placement in this film is perfect. The whole soundtrack is perfect, in some movies not every song makes it into the movie, but in this movie, every single track is in the film. Every song is placed perfectly in each scene, Halsey Experiment On Me was my favorite. The song plays with Harley fighting the prisoners with the rain beating down on her makes the scene more powerful.
Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn caught my eye since Suicide Squad. In Suicide Squad she didn’t get many scenes to showcase her fight scenes, but in her own film, we saw how much a unique and smart fighter she is. Having an R rating for this film makes the most sense for Harley, I can’t imagine Harley in a PG 13 film there won’t be anything left of her.
Harley Quinn shines in this movie, she is done with the joker she needs to find herself. She is not Joker’s girlfriend anymore, she wants to have a name for herself I love how she said she should be the one everyone is afraid of. I love how every time Harley shows up, she backtracks and goes back to the past to explain. The introduction to the Birds of Prey is hilarious, but also clever.
Jurnee Smollett Bell’s Black Canary has a killer voice, and oh yes it will kill your earbuds. She is a singer working for Roman Sionis, she has a tragic backstory and doesn’t seem to know how to handle her powers yet, but wow it was satisfying to hear the canary cry at the end. Black Canary’s signature is her canary cry, the cry could shatter your eardrums. This was a wonderful introduction to canary and the other Birds of Prey.
The movie centers around Harley and the Birds of Prey on a race to find a priceless Bertinelli diamond so Roman Sionis would spare her life. Sionis believes it would be fun to send every mercenary in Gotham to join in the fun too. Huntress, Helena Bertinelli the sole survivor of her family’s massacre who is after the diamond for her own reasons. Cassandra Cain is a pickpocket who accidentally found the diamond, Dinah Lance “Black Canary” who turns on her boss, and Renee Montoya a cop who is dumb enough to open a case on Sionis. Roman Sionis “Black Mask” makes a great sadistic villain, his dark humor makes him just a bit scarier. The tearing up faces part was definitely disturbing to me.
Pink and Blue smoke in the air, glitter bombs, foam bullets, a car chase on roller skates and an epic showdown on a merry go around is Harley Quinn’s style. I never saw a DC film with such vibrant colors, but I always associate colors with Harley Quinn so seeing this showdown was a treat for me. Once again the little details in the film shows how much they care for the comics and the previous movies, the Ace Chemicals explosion and the flashback of Suicide Squad. Harley fights with aerobics, her mallet and bat also the special hyena Bruce!
Harley Quinn Birds Of Prey was such a blast and a good time. There were plenty of laughs and heartwarming scenes. This film was made towards a small portion of the audience and I loved it, I would totally watch it a second time. Birds Of Prey is playing in theaters now go take a look and have a good time!
JessieClexaFlash 