96 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020
Margot Robbie plays the nefarious Harley Quinn in Cathy Yan’s film.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
CRIMINAL
“Birds of Prey” and “Corpus Christi.”
BY ANTHONY LANE
ILLUSTRATION BY LAURA CALLAGHAN
B
eware of movies with long titles. I
vaguely recall a Dustin Hoffman
film, made in 1971, called “Who Is Harry
Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those
Terrible Things About Me?,” but for the
life of me I can’t remember the answer
to either question. An oversized title has
no practical worth, its sole purpose being
to give us a mandatory dose of wacki-
ness. Hence the latest contender, “Birds
of Prey, and the Fantabulous Emanci-
pation of One Harley Quinn.” Don’t
you feel kooked up just reading that?
The film, directed by Cathy Yan, fol-
lows on from “Suicide Squad” (2016),
which ranked among the most thump-
ingly cheerless experiences of recent
years. Sequels were therefore inevitable.
This one begins—and, given the tone
at which the movie aims, should per-
haps have continued—with a high-speed
cartoon sequence. We are yanked through
the personal history of Harley Quinn
(Margot Robbie), a bright kid who went
on to become first a psychiatrist and
then a frenzied felon. What wrought the
change was her relationship with the
Joker, a big cheese in the stink of Gotham
City. (In case you’re wondering: no, Joa-
quin Phoenix does not appear.) Harley,
however, has now split with her grin-
ning swain and gone solo.
Comic-book films are plagued by a
particular indecision: are the protago-
nists better off being lonesome or gre-
garious? When we describe them as club-
bable, is that because they like to gang
together or because, taken as individu-
als, they’re just asking to be hit over the
head? Needless to say, the plague is ex-
tremely profitable; Iron Man, for instance,
has three Marvel movies pretty much to
himself but also gets folded into the
Avengers. The DC franchise, desperate
not to be outdone, has tried something
similar with Batman, forcing the poor
fellow to sign up for “Justice League”
(2017), when we all know that he’d be so
much happier staying home, curling up
in his little Bat-bed, and shedding idle
tears over the Bat-days that are no more.
No one could call Harley Quinn a
recluse. She loves to go out, get wasted,
meet people, and fight them. In on-
screen graphics, she proudly reports
what it is about her that vexes her op-
ponents. (“Voted for Bernie.” “Have a
vagina.”) Yet Harley is often alone in
the frame—marching toward the cam-
era in her T-shirt and shorts, smiling
madly through lips of fire-engine red,
and peppering us with unceasing chatter,
as if words were buckshot. She lives on
her own, too, with a stuffed beaver in a
tutu and a pet hyena named Bruce. (As
with the title, note the surfeit of nutti-
ness. Rarely have I seen a movie strain
so hard to seem out-there.) Our hero-
ine needs some kindred spirits, and quick.
So, a warbling welcome to the Birds
of Prey: Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco),
a teen-age thief; Dinah Lance ( Jurnee
Smollett-Bell), a singer and chauffeur;
and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), a
cop who’s been passed over for promo-
tion. Last and loftiest is Helena Berti-
nelli—the one interesting card in the
pack, the reason being neither her back-
story (some Mafia-flavored baloney
about revenge) nor her skill with a cross-
bow but the fact that she’s played by
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who, thanks
to her low and Lauren Bacall-ish deliv-
ery, brings an amused aloofness to the
fray. All of the above team up with Har-
ley to tackle Roman Siones (Ewan Mc-
Gregor), a Gotham superthug, other-
wise known as Black Mask. Why? Because
he sometimes wears one. S c a r y.
The script is by Christina Hodson,
who has also contributed to the creation
of Highland 2, an app that enables you
to submit your screenplay to gender anal-
ysis. No surprise, then, that Yan’s movie,
peopled as it is by women who talk among
themselves, with only fitful reference to
men, doesn’t so much pass the Bechdel
Test as ace it, while also ticking the pro-
fanity box, the ear-splitting box, and the
bone-snapping box—every box, in fact,
except for the tricky one that requires
a motion picture to be good. “Birds of
Prey,” alas, is an unholy and sadistic mess.
“Nothing gets a guy’s attention like vio-
lence,” Harley says, and the action con-
sists largely of female combatants break-
ing the limbs of hapless males and
clobbering them in the groin. Thoroughly
deserved, I guess, and about time, too,
though the point was more efficiently
and more elegantly made long ago, in
“Nothing Sacred” (1937), when Carole
Lombard, in revenge for being punched
