12/31/2023 0 Comments Birds of prey movie title![]() ![]() It’s a lovely touch that would never occur to the David Ayers of this world.Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is changing its name to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey on all theater chain sites after a struggle to fly at the box office in its opening weekend. ![]() Conceived with John Wick’s Chad Staheski and his stunt team 87Eleven, the action sequences are muscular and confident - a creative baseball bat frenzy to Ram Jam’s ‘Black Betty’ (bam-a-lam), a fight in a fun house that has the feel of ’60s Batman - but Yan still manages to insert some personality in there: as Harley double teams with Black Canary, keep ’em peeled for a hair-tie handoff that any woman in a fight would relate to. Yan and Hodson throw a ton of ideas at the screen, most of which stick: Harley interacting with her own voiceover, Marilyn Monroe fantasies, direct stares to camera, and a fun running gag about the grievances every character has with Ms Quinn - the most exquisite delivers a terrific Frida Kahlo gag. McGregor’s antagonist - who runs the town and has a penchant for both African art and peeling the face off rivals - nibbles rather than chews scenery he isn’t big and flamboyant enough to pose a genuine threat. There are flashbacks within flashbacks and comedy title-cards (“4 Minutes Ago”) but the time-shifting dissipates momentum in the middle stretch - you never get the sense that Yan, whose only previous feature is absurdist satire Dead Pigs, has a firm grip on the narrative. It’s so much fun when the group finally come together, it feels like a misstep not getting them together sooner. The film sets up the question of who is Harley without Mr J? The answer lies with a motley crew of diverse women. Quickly recapping the events of Suicide Squad in animated form, we quickly learn Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Joker have broken up - she publically updates her relationship status by driving a truck into Ace Chemicals, the plant where she pledged herself to the clown prince of crime - and the film frenetically establishes her trying to cope on her own buying a hyena she calls Bruce (after Wayne), roller derbying, her partying antics captured in one long shot like a coked-up 1917. It’s a moving-on-after-a-break-up movie, a Marriage Story with punch-ups. Perhaps the first rug-pull is that it isn’t strictly a Birds Of Prey flick at all. It doesn’t all work, but it’s a gaudy, muddled, mostly entertaining glitter-grenade celebration of just how women can fuck shit up. ![]() Because Birds Of Prey not only shares the DNA of a girl gang who can kick your sorry ass - Cathy Yan’s film also boasts some of the subversive and rockabilly spirit of QT’s ’94 classic. It’s a particularly apt part-time alias for Robbie’s passion project, the first big-screen outing for DC’s all-women superhero squad. For the uninitiated, ‘Fox Force Five’ is Mia Wallace’s ( Uma Thurman) never-aired TV pilot in Pulp Fiction concerning five female secret agents each with a distinct identity and skill - a knife thrower, a kung fu master, a demolition expert and a French girl whose “speciality was sex”. ![]() At the behest of star and producer Margot Robbie, the working title for (deep breath) Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn) was ‘Fox Force Five’. ![]()
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