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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nTo\nbe fair, Leto\u2019s lousy Joker is nowhere to be seen in this movie. Instead we get\nto spend a whole movie with one of the high points of \u201cSuicide Squad\u201d: Margot\nRobbie\u2019s Harley Quinn. Harley is usually inseparable from The Joker, tethered\nto him in an unhealthy relationship based on obsession and emotional\ndependence. But here the couple is broken up, to the point where Harley burns\nthe bridge with her ex-lover by blowing up their favorite chemical plant. Her\nnewfound freedom puts her on the bad side of the villainous Roman Sionis (Ewan\nMcGregor), who in the past wouldn\u2019t have harmed Harley because of her\nconnection to The Joker, but now himself feels free\u2026 to do all the harming he\nwants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Things\naren\u2019t going well for Sionis on a number of fronts. Harley broke his driver\u2019s\nlegs, and he\u2019s not 100% sure he can trust new driver Black Canary (Jurnee\nSmollett-Bell). Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) of the Gotham Police\nDepartment is building a case against him. A crossbow-wielding vigilante named\nHuntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is killing prominent criminals in Gotham. And\nyoung pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basko) has stolen the diamond that he\nneeds to seize control of the entire Gotham underworld. Sionis has the\nresources to eliminate all five enemies individually, but does he have the\nresources the eliminate them together? On one hand, it\u2019s unlikely that five\nsuch disparate women will want to work together, on the other, the film\u2019s title\nand everything about its advertising indicate a team-up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nproblem with the movie in a nutshell is that it doesn\u2019t have room for complex\ncharacters. Montoya is a principled cop, fine. Cain is a street urchin with\nunloving foster parents, fine (aside from Basko\u2019s stiff acting). But Huntress\nand Black Canary\u2019s stories seem rushed and I never connected with either\ncharacter the way I was supposed to, and I very easily could have with more\ndevelopment. Then there\u2019s Harley herself, and while her backstory is more than\nfleshed out in an animated opening and references to her background as a\npsychiatrist, the movie forgets to have her really struggle with the very\nemancipation that\u2019s right there in the title. She\u2019s fiercely independent right\noff the bat, and until Sionis brings it up in the last act, I completely forgot\nabout her previous dependence on The Joker, even though that is and has always\nbeen a major part of her character. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other\ncomplaints I have about \u201cBirds of Prey\u201d include Sionis\u2019s villainous mannerisms\nseeming unnatural coming from McGregor (as if the character, not the actor, has\nstudied comic book villains and is making a half-hearted attempt to emulate\nthem) and a climactic action sequence in a funhouse being more at home in the\nchintzier Joel Schumacher Batman movies. Positives are mostly limited to the\nfilm\u2019s dialogue taking full advantage of the R rating and the performances by\nRobbie and Perez. There\u2019s a good Harley Quinn movie somewhere out there, but\nthe DC Universe hasn\u2019t hit it yet. Early numbers indicate that the film is\nunderperforming at the box office. I hope it does well enough for us to get a\nsequel, but not so well that there isn\u2019t pressure on the filmmakers to step up\ntheir game for the next movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBirds of Prey\u2026\u201d is rated R for\nstrong violence and language throughout, and some sexual and drug material. Its\nrunning time is 109 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver I\u2019m writing this review less than three hours removed from Joaquin Phoenix winning an Oscar for \u201cJoker.\u201d It is the second time an actor has won… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}