“And that is why you should never partake in paying federal income taxes.”

Birds of Prey (and the rest of the title) takes place sometime after the events of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, where, after splitting up with the Joker, Harley Quinn joins a group of heroines by the names of Black Canary, Huntress, and a ex-police officer named Renee Montoya, in order to save a girl who has been targeted by the villainous Black Mask (played by Ewan McGregor) after she steals a diamond that could grant him the power to basically take over the city. This was the first DCEU movie on my rewatch that I hadn’t seen before, and admittedly, I had a fun time with this. It’s one of the more stylistic and bold movies in the franchise, and I really dug that about it.

Margot Robbie continues to nail the role of Harley Quinn. She’s hilarious, and a character you kind of root for despite all the terrible stuff she does. You can tell that there is just a little bit of humanity left inside of her, and her clever bits and charm make her fun to watch. She’s absolutely crazy, but not as cruel and evil as a lot of the other criminals in Gotham, though she herself is obviously still a criminal. I’m also not a big fan of narration in movies, with a few exceptions, but I thought her narration was pretty fun, especially the “unreliable narrator” parts. She is the one and only character casting in the DCEU that I would be completely fine with James Gunn carrying over to the new DC Universe, because she’s kind of one of those castings that’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the role.

By far the thing that surprised me the most about Birds of Prey was the action. The choreography was absolutely phenomenal and over-the-top in the best way possible. What’s even more impressive to me, though, is that after doing some research, I learned that the main cast did the vast majority of their own stunts. Margot Robbie really captured the “acrobatic” side of the character, which I didn’t really expect to see in this film. My favorite action scenes were the bits where the actors (or really just the actresses) used different parts of the environment to take out the people they were fighting.

This is also a very visually pleasant movie to look at, with how vibrant it is. Additionally, I think this might have been the first movie in the DCEU to really capture the look of Gotham City, fully realized. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely not The Batman, or even Tim Burton’s Batman, but it doesn’t just look like any standard city that you would find in our real world. It also feels chaotic and lived in, in the way that Gotham City should. The film really portrays the vibe that there is crime everywhere, and the city that needs a Batman (which tragically makes it even more unfortunate that we didn’t get more Ben Affleck as Batman).

The actual story I found pretty interesting, too, though it definitely wasn’t a highlight. However, I’d still say it was a positive. I enjoyed seeing Harley Quinn’s little “day in the life” adventures leading up to the climactic third act, and thought that Cassandra Cain, the younger girl who follows her around for a decent portion of the film, made it even more interesting, especially when Harley Quinn gives her terrible life advice, funnily enough. The whole target on Cassandra by Black Mask to get the diamond definitely could have been done better, though, which I’ll get more into later.

If I had to pick out a mixed, it would, surprisingly enough, be the way Harley Quinn was written. As I said, Margot Robbie is absolutely fantastic in this role, so she has nothing to do with this, but I didn’t feel like she had any significant or meaningful character development by the time we got to the end. She doesn’t really grow or change, which is kind of okay, I guess, as maybe she shouldn’t, but I was hoping her character would be more compelling by the end, instead of just interesting and fun to watch.

The big negative that I already mentioned, however, would have to be Black Mask. He’s by far one of the least interesting villains in the DCEU to me, and not even as great an actor as Ewan McGregor could have saved him. He’s neither multidimensional nor interesting, and his whole villainous scheme of obtaining the diamond to take over the city was kind of dumb if I’m being honest. I also found him just plain weird and creepy, and not in a good way either.

This is far from a great film, but it was a pretty memorable one. It has a unique sense of style, and I couldn’t emphasize enough how great Margot Robbie is as Harley Quinn.