Published On: Fri, Feb 7th, 2020

‘Birds of Prey’ Is Redeeming the Reputation of DC Action Movies

Since the release of Wonder Woman back in 2017, DC has been slacking when it came to action movies (Todd Philips’s Joker excluded – of course – for it is under the thriller genre), but Birds of Prey And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn was quite a redemption for the most recent DC action movies – like Shazam and Aquaman.

Although not the most incredible movie in her resume, actress Margot Robbie still managed to deliver an incredible performance, which is really what kept the flow of the movie going. She made you understand the character, Harley Quinn, and why she is the way she is; adding little details like going to medical school and being an actual psychiatrist made her seem less like an incompetent villain who is incapable of surviving on her own. The aesthetics and overall vibrancy is what truly made the movie good – alongside Robbie’s performance. Director Cathy Yan knew what she was doing when it came to the aesthetic of the movie, always making Harley Quinn the brightest point in every scene. Yan’s directing and Robbie’s acting truly complemented each other to create the vibrant and lighthearted aesthetic of the movie.

Living inside of the illustrated mind of Harley Quinn was a very interesting touch to the movie. It’s hard to tell whether or not Yan was trying the same motif as Joker in which you cannot tell what is real or fake from the lens of the psychotic; but no matter what she was trying, Yan managed to truly entertain by simply adding color to the formerly seen gothic setting of Gotham. 

A detail that added to making the movie fun and bright was the lack of blood and bullets. Harley Quinn never kills someone with a bullet, and there is a whole scene in which she has a gun that simply shoots confetti and smoke bombs, nothing lethal; there also were no dead corpses or blood spilling. According to Deadline Magazine, Yan stated that she was very careful when it came to the balance of violence in the movie in order to keep it as lighthearted yet entertaining as possible. 

Despite the somewhat corny theme of character transformation with rocky development, this was still an enjoyable movie to watch; adding to the wave of comic book adaptation movies directed, and starring, women.

 

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