Birds of Prey (And the Subtitle I Refuse to Type) Review - SPOILERS

It is now 2020 and many of us are probably now looking back on the things we did in 2019 and wondering what might have been if we had just done that one thing differently. Maybe you shouldn't have quit that job, maybe you shouldn't have married that woman, maybe you shouldn't have left your wallet next to the shallow grave where they eventually found her bod....

*Ahem* 

So anyways it's not just New Years Resolutions here, people, it's New Years Regrets; and I sit here the very definition of such.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, out of the two DC movies to be released these past few months; I chose to see Birds of Prey. 

Yup, drink that in. After all the rave reviews and scathing indictments by YouTube commentators and woke critics respectively; after warnings of mass shootings and incel uprisings; after all the hype surrounding this one particular film... I ended up not seeing "Joker" in the theaters, and instead opted for Deadpool's retarded feminist sister. And make no mistake, that's what this is. DC's attempt at their own Deadpool. And, imagine my shock, it doesn't doesn't turn out quite as well.

Gee, DC, I'm starting to see a pattern. Aren't you? 

So the story begins with Harley Quinn - ex-therapist, partner in crime and lover to the Joker - relaying her past to us through a cutesy animated segment narrated with her oh so quirky and thick Noo Yoik accent and if you find that shit annoying, get fucking used to it. It continues incessantly throughout the entire film. 

So Joker, rather uncharacteristically, makes a sane decision and kicks her to the kerb (presumably for not being the Harley Quinn in the Animated Series) and so she reacts by ramming a conveniently placed tanker filled with petrol into the ACE Chemicals factory where she and the Joker consummated their relationship by quite literally becoming pale imitations of the characters they're based on. 

TITLE CARD: 4 Minutes Earlier - Detective Renee Montoya investigates the multiple slaying of a group of gangsters (which will later turn out to be the work of another comic book character, "Huntress", also effectively bastardised by this film) and expertly and bravely fends off the brutal mansplaining inflicted upon her by her partner. You go girl! That's got to be the worst thing that's ever happened to a latino lesbian in Gothman City and you handled it with aplomb. 

I mean she did get kidnapped by a love-sick Two-Face in the comics but whatever.

Meanwhile Roman Sidonus - AKA Black Mask - (played by Euan McGregor and yes, I'll cool it with the parenthesis from now on) is after some diamond in order to fund his vague City dominating gangster bullshit and ends up hiring a pre-vigilante days Dinah Lance - AKA Black Canary - who looks nothing like she does in the comics and I'm guessing that's the case because they already had a blonde white woman in the film and Hollywood nowadays does casting by picking out colors in a Dulux chart. 

I mean we wouldn't want Neo-Nazis to accidentally like our movie or anything.

If it sounds like I'm having trouble explaining the plot to you, it's probably because I am. Throughout most of its first hour the film jumps back and forth in a non-linear style that really doesn't lend anything to the film other than confusion. Yes, I know it's because its being narrated by Harley and she's a scatterbrained lunatic, I get that; but it isn't helped when pretty much all the character's backgrounds are explained in this overly rushed and spoon fed fashion.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I mean between the female writer, female director and generally female cast, it figures that this film would take something relatively simple and make it needlessly complicated. 

Thank you, thank you. So a black woman and a Jew walk into a Chinese takeaway....

Okay, I'm gonna try and explain this. Please bear with me. 

Roman Sidonus, the villain of the film, wants a diamond that used to belong to a crime family known as the Bertinellis (Huntress's family, who are dead). He sends Black Canary off to get the diamond but it is pickpocketed from her by a 12 year old Cassandra Cane (one of the Batgirls from the comics) and then promptly swallowed, foreshadowing jokes about shitting and laxatives from here on out. Harley, just as she's about to be killed by Sidonus, claims she can find the diamond because she's "good at finding things". Roman, for some reason, decides to take her up on this offer. This results in Harley storming the police station where Cane is with a grenade launcher filled with paint, overpowering multiple officers in the process. When she finally finds Cane (locked away in a cell next to a bunch of hardened criminals because that's Gotham for you) she accidentally releases all the other prisoners who, instead of attempting to escape, try to beat up Harley for no adequately explained reason.

(There, that wasn't so hard. And I managed to get rid of all those extra parenthesis I had lying around.) 

Now I personally was never under the impression that Harley was all that great a fighter. I don't know what the new comics are making her out to be but, honestly, fuck the new comics. The only Harley that exists to me is the version in the Animated Series created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm; the Harley that was actually a funny, charmingly insane and often tragic character that actually had an interesting relationship with the Joker. Here they've made her into a mess, a parody of 90s Grrl Power chique with more STDs than charm, devoid of any and all sympathetic traits. 

Now this is a woman I would sleep next to with one eye open 
and a gun under my pillow.

They can't even seem to get her fighting prowess down. One minute she's taking on the Gotham PD single handed, the next she's having trouble with a drunk five foot tall latino dyke with no weapons. And don't get me started on Gotham PD here. This is Gotham fucking City. Every officer here should be decked out to the tits in body armour, grenades, firearms and SPARE fucking firearms. Hell, they should each have their own mini-nuke. And even if they don't, it's Harley fucking Quinn! You mean to tell me you can take a black kid with a flick knife on a crowded subway with a .357 bullet at mid-range but you can't take down a 90Ib white woman in booty shorts and a midriff top, armed with nothing but a grenade launcher that fires confetti, AT CLOSE RANGE? 

I have problems with all the fight scenes in this movie but we'll get to that in a moment. 

The villain, Roman Sidonis, is portrayed as the oft warned about 'manbaby', spoilt beyond belief and prone to flying off the handle at even the perception of having not gotten his way. In other words, it's the "Last Jedi" method of male villain writing. As a result he isn't anywhere near as intimidating as he should be, even as he orders his right hand man Mr Zasz (one of the only things I feel this film got right) to slice people's faces off while their still alive.

Victor Zasz; a role model to men everywhere.

The aforementioned 'mansplaining' in the film was actually copped to by Euan McGregor, who in an interview promoting the film said:

“What interested me with ‘Birds of Prey’ is that it’s a feminist film. It is very finely written. There is in the script a real look on misogyny, and I think we need that. We need to be more aware of how we behave with the opposite sex. We need to be taught to change.”

Maybe you do Faux Bi Wan, but the way I deal with women is perfectly appropriate. And how do I deal with them, you may ask? Simple: With great emotional distance. But please, carry on:

“Misogynists in movies are often extreme: They rape, they beat women… and it is legitimate to represent people like that, because they exist and they are obviously the worst. But in the ‘Birds of Prey’ dialogues, there is always a hint of everyday misogyny, of those things you say as a man you do not even realize.”

Euan, you misunderstand. I am perfectly aware of the things I say around women. If you are not then it is you who needs to reevaluate your communication skills. I empathise though. Women are scary, what with the cooties and the turning into a werewolf once a month and whatnot. But given time you will soon see them as I do: The thing that occasionally comes up and talks to you and attempts to hug you while you're trying to write a review of a bad movie. 

“(The film takes on) mansplaining… and it’s in the script in a very subtle way. I found that brilliant.”

You know what Euan, I actually agree. It was subtle. In fact it was probably the most subtle thing about this movie. Not that I am bregrudging what is essentially a Harley Quinn movie (and really, that's what it should have been, just that) for not being subtle. That would be stupid. What I do bregrudge it for is being a largely incomprehensible, hamfisted feminist pander-flick that never really manages to establish any connection between its female lead characters beyond the superficial "I got boobs, so do you, grrl power" one. 

By the time the end of the film rolls around and Sidonus lays siege to Harley and Joker's old pad with his army of incels, the girls finding themselves backed into a corner, it honestly feels like they've all been in separate movies for an hour an a half. Especially Huntress, whose running gag throughout the film is that she calls herself Huntress but everyone else calls her Crossbow Killer and she gets annoyed at this. Way to rip of "Guardians of the Galaxy", movie. Huntress has a fairly interesting if not generic revenge driven back story but here they turn her into a clown for lolzorz. Nick Fury Syndrome strikes again

Never Forget

After a series of annoying fight scenes (again, I'll get to it later), Roman Sidonus is blown up with a grenade in a wet fart of a villain death. In the denouement we see the girls hanging out at a local burger joint, high fiving and chatting away like they've been friends for ages. Excuse me, movie, but you didn't earn this. It really says something when the end of "The Expendables" had Dolph Lundgren's character hanging out and drinking beers with the guys after he got high on drugs, fucked up a misson, got kicked out of the crew and then defected to a bunch of enemy mercs to try and kill his old friends, and that was STILL more realistic than this shit. 

I think the message is supposed to be that women just get along or something. Sisterhood and all that. But this leads me to the final point of this already overlong review. Sitting comfortably? 

Good.

So it took me a little while to realize what it was that really bothered me about the fight scenes in these kinds of movies. It's not that they're unrealistic. It's a movie. Of course it's unrealistic. The problem is that feminist writers don't understand film violence. Specifically they don't understand male film violence. 

Look at Bruce Willis in "Die Hard". And I mean really look hard at him while he's fighting. Is he enjoying himself?

NO.

Jackie Chan. What's he doing throughout most of the excellent fight scenes he himself often choreographs? 

RUNNING AWAY.

John McClane is not enjoying himself. He's having a shitty time. Even as he bombards the villain with Yippi Kay Yays to keep his spirits up and mock his opponent, he's still bleeding out his feet. The bruises and blood and sweat are what makes a fight scene powerful. The fact that McClane is hurting makes it more believable, even as he drives a car off a ramp into a chopper. You can even see this in the recent fantastic Daredevil fight scenes. 

With every hit you can see he's hurting. So when he finally beats them all and saves the kid it feels like he earned it. And this is the problem I have with the kinds of action scenes I see in pander fests like "Birds of Prey". None of them ever seem like they're hurting. They all just get up and flip around like its nothing. 

This is because they don't understand: People don't enjoy violence as such, they enjoy watching people overcome adversity. 

"But Glenn!" I hear you cry into your waifu body pillow, "'Birds of Prey' is a comedy film! It's not the same as 'Die Hard' or 'Daredevil'!" Okay, true. But the same rules apply. The violence is made funnier in a comedy film by the reaction, just as its made more believable and powerful in other films. The Three Stooges show this. Hell, HOME ALONE shows this. 
But here you just end up with a bunch of people flailing around with blood splatter and bone cracking and ultimately nothing is gained. Nothing is earned and you're left sitting there wondering where your 10 bucks went; why Renee Montoya, a GCPD detective, is somehow on the same fighting level as someone like Huntress or Black Canary; and why, after all the explosions, gun battles and assorted violence that's been going down over the course of the day has BATMAN NOT SHOWED UP. 

Overall everything about this film is unearned, forced, compressed, muddled and generally a chore to watch. The characters display no chemistry or connection to one another and the villain is a Last Jedi style manbaby strawman for the writer to live her power fantasy through alongside all of the dumb as fuck "MEN BAD" moments sprinkled throughout. Avoid this film at all costs.

    
Also watch "The Villainess". It's way better.