Dir: Cathy Yan

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Starring:
Margot Robbie
Ewan McGregor
Rosie Perez
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Jurnee Smollett-Bell
Ella Jay Basco

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***Spoilers***

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To say I’m not a DC fan would be the biggest understatement of the century, I am yet to enjoy a DC comics film that isn’t the Joker (and lets face it, Joker doesn’t count as a “DC comics film”) or Shazam! (and I really only enjoyed Shazam! because it was so dumb). I find the stories painfully predictable, the overuse of slow motion painfully forced and the character development just painful.

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It gives me great joy to say Birds of Prey is an exception.

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Set after 2016’s Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey tells the story of Harley Quinn dealing with her recent break up from Mr. J (The Joker) and realising that without the protection of her boyfriend, who also happens to be the most feared villain in Gotham, she is vulnerable. And it just so turns out that many, many people in Gotham want her head on a sharp stick. In a bid to buy back her protection she finds a group of super kick-ass women to fight her corner. There is a background plot involving some valuable diamond or something but I kind of didn’t care much about that, I just wanted to hear Robbie’s eccentric accent and watch some women kick some male ass.

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Margot Robbie’s performance as “the one Harley Quinn” is almost addictive to watch, something I don’t remember at all from Suicide Squad. She’s quirky, messed up and totally reckless all in a weirdly endearing, captivating way.

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The plot is patchy in a few areas but that’s expected for me, as it’s a film adapted from a series of comics I know next to nothing about. The introduction to the new characters could have been a bit stronger, it took me a really long time to work out who the actual “Birds of Prey” were. It helped that I had read before seeing the film that Harley herself isn’t actually part of that group. I wasn’t expecting the GCDP detective to be a Bird so that was a nice surprise at the end, they also totally got me with the surprise reveal of Black Canary’s vocal powers, similar to that of Banshee in Marvel’s X-Men.

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Ewan McGregor as super villain Roman Sionis was comical and camp with enough fright in his character to terrorise the audience. The face slicing was like something straight out of a Quentin Tarantino film and was quite simply, gross.

My heart literally ached when that delicious all day breakfast sandwich hit the floor and I found myself aww-ing at Bruce, the domesticated Hyena. The film is totally new and cleverly put together with some whoop-ass women at the helm, I thoroughly enjoyed it.