Walking out of “Birds of Prey,” you get the feeling Martin Scorsese might be right about comic book movies. They sure can be entertaining, but all too often, their built-in limitations keep them from really saying anything.
Cathy Yan’s R-rated origin story for a team of female anti-heroes wants to be an action-packed tome of anti-sexist empowerment, but any attempt to achieve real substance gets lost in all the razzle-dazzle.
Essentially, “Birds of Prey” wants to be a heroic story. But it fails to embrace — or include — heroic characters.
Based on a series of female-driven comic books, “Birds of Prey” comes with a subtitle that tells you exactly what is happening on screen, and hopefully off-screen as well: “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.” It’s a mouthful of a title, but it’s really that one word — emancipation — that’s important.
Within the film’s context, the emancipation is the story of a female character coming into her own in the aftermath of a nasty breakup. But it’s the outside context that offers the potential to make things interesting — at least until the movie itself lets that context down.
Technically, “Birds of Prey” is a spinoff from 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” a messy and disappointing comic book riff on the Dirty Dozen that pitted a motley crew of super-powered bad guys against a CGI-heavy witch. Margot Robbie’s Quinn — the eccentric girlfriend of Jared Leto’s Joker — was far and away the best part of the movie, which is probably why the experience inspired her to do her own thing. According to Variety, Robbie just couldn’t understand why her character would stick around with a guy who “wants to kill her most of the time.”
“Birds of Prey” is absolutely about women finding success. It’s directed by a woman, it’s written by a woman (Christina Hodson) and not only does Robbie star as the lead character — now broken up with the Joker — she’s also a producer. The story is about a group of women who come together to fight against an evil crime boss (played by Ewan McGregor), and each is a victim of sexism and misogyny.
“Birds of Prey” could be an emancipation of female comic book heroes, building on 2017’s “Wonder Woman.” But aside from the female-centric production and cast, what makes “Birds of Prey” both unique and problematic is that it sends a heroic message through a group of antiheroes. To a point, it’s kind of fun — and once again, Robbie steals the show as the over-the-top lead. But all of the anti-hero stuff — the wanton violence and frequent profanity, the littering (seriously), even the film’s soundtrack — gets in the way of the celebration of female empowerment. These aren’t exactly the women you’d want your daughter to grow up to be.
But the one thing that really keeps “Birds of Prey” from making a statement about female empowerment is that it is more interested in being a kinetic and crazy action movie. Comic book movies have made a long habit out of using current issues to make them feel relevant — see the Mutant Registration Act in the second X-Men movie, or the international community vs. the Avengers subplot of “Captain America: Civil War.” Ultimately, though, those themes took a backseat to the third act CGI showdown, which was really what fans were coming to see.
Last year’s “Joker” inverted that equation. “Joker” was a current issues drama about mental illness and social violence that just happened to be a comic book movie. In fact, the comic book stuff was “Joker’s” biggest weakness.
To its own detriment, “Birds of Prey” flips back to the original formula. The empowerment theme is just a device serving the cause of entertainment. The fight scenes pitting Robbie against waves of trained thugs are exciting but preposterous. Each of the “birds” has a negative experience with a male character, but they feel obligatory and two-dimensional.
The most vivid act of misogyny is when McGregor’s character forces a female club patron to dance because he thought she was laughing at his expense. It’s the one genuinely uncomfortable and difficult scene — the only one with any real pathos — yet the woman doesn’t become one of the team. She should be.
“Birds of Prey” doesn’t want to be “Joker” — the character is referenced, but makes no cameo — yet its ties are too close to let the bird out of the cage. Like in Todd Phillips’ film, “Birds of Prey” seems to exist in a gritty, real-life Gotham bereft of superpowers (at least until an out-of-place moment late in the film). But the action is meant to entertain, and Yan’s kinetic directing puts too much emphasis on the film’s style, undercutting its substance. “Birds of Prey” shows plenty of potential to say and be something more, but it’s really just happy to be a decent comic book movie.
At the end of it all, Robbie’s damaged anti-hero should manage to break away from the stink of “Suicide Squad.” But ironically, Harley Quinn is still playing a distant cinematic second-fiddle to her ex-boyfriend, and the Martin Scorseses of the world have one more reason to ignore the comic book genre.