After the criminal underworld of Gotham finds out Harley Quinn (Margo Robbie) has broken up with the Joker, a target is put on her back and everyone is after her including Roman Sionis/ Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). Harley is thrown in to rescue Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) from GCPD custody because she has a diamond that Roman wants. Meanwhile, Detective Renee Montoya is trying her best to bring down Roman's criminal empire with the help of a nightclub singer Dinah Lance. To further complicate things, Helena Bertnelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is taking out various figures in Gotham&'s criminal underworld responsible for her parents deaths.

BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN) has the disadvantage of having one very unwieldy title where they should have just called it HARLEY QUINN or BRIDS OF PREY. It has great production design and action sequences, but most of the costume design is ugly (with the exception of Harley Quinn's roller derby outfit, some of Dinah's outfits, and Helena's outfit) and some of the writing is crap. The character that fares the worst is Cassandra Cain which is nothing like the character from the comics and we end up with one of the worst pick pockets on film (and you don't swallow a diamond because it isn't good for your insides plus why didn't cops frisk her before putting her in the back of the car). I do wish DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures had better oversight of the screenplay written by Christina Hodson because BIRDS OF PREY could have been a better film than the end result we ended up with (and the jarring flashback scenes stop the movie dead in its tracks every single time). Cathy Yan did a great directing job to a point, but some of the credit goes to the stunt team of the John Wick movies who helped create the action sequences. The screenplay does have some holes like where is Batman while all of this is happening and no name dropping of Commissioner Gordon or a mention of Batgirl. If this was a proper BIRDS OF PREY movie, it wouldn't be complete without Batgirl. Instead we end up with a Harley Quinn movie with most of the Birds of Prey team introduced. I do expect THE SUICIDE SQUAD (directed by James Gunn) will feature better Harley Quinn material and costumes. You can either watch it while it is still in theaters or you may want to wait for BIRDS OF PREY to hit home media while you're waiting for what is properly the better DC movies to hit the big screen like WONDER WOMAN 1984 and the SUICIDE SQUAD sequel (AQUAMAN 2 and THE BATMAN with bated breath).

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