Birds of Prey

After having played Harley Quinn in 2016's Suicide Squad, Margot Robbie not only returns for Birds of Prey but she also helped produce it with her own production company due to her love of playing the character and convincing Warner Bros to make an all women comic book film that's directed by an Asian woman with small credits and is rated R. For the most part, all of that really works with this dark comedic take on the genre similar to the Deadpool films and a bit with Joker. After the Joker breaks up with Harley, she doesn't take it well until finally deciding to put her life together and make sure everyone in Gotham knows. This unfortunately leads to many criminals in the city to go after her due to past grievances as she doesn't have Joker's protection anymore. Through this, she ends up in the middle of Black Mask's plot to obtain a rare diamond that eventually culminates in Harley meeting several women who all have something to do with Mask. Huntress wants to kill him and his men for the death of her family, Renee Montoya is a detective wanting to build a case against Mask, and Dinah Lance wants to get out of his abusive service. All four work together to keep a young Cassandra Cain safe after she steals the diamond and swallows it to hide it. Cathy Yan's direction is full of quick moments and montages while also putting the camera in unique positions, thus giving us a very unique look different from the rest of the DCEU. The cast is incredible, with Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee-Smollett Bell, Rosie Perez, and Ella Jay Basco all providing a fun and exiting chemistry between each other. All the while Ewan McGregor plays up his charm to portray such a fun and engaging villain who is convincing at making you scared whenever his anger rises. Though the writing isn't very unique, and constant flashbacks happening either too much and then not as much, it is full of so much energy and very wild and fun moments with references to the comics while not giving us a standard superhero film like one would expect. Due to having one of the John Wick directors working on the action scenes, a lot of the set pieces aren't just so well shot and choreographed but very creative due to the different fighting styles each character employs. Of course, Birds of Prey still has issues that plague it throughout such as the fact that despite being set in Gotham, Batman is only mentioned once and never explained why he never makes an appearance. While Basco's performance is great, one problem is that this is the first live action adaptation of Cain, a unique character who only communicates through body movement and is considered one of DC's most capable fighters, and turning her into an average teen who needs to be rescued feels like they just gave her the name for the recognition. There's also its R rating, since some of the excessive violence and swearing feels like it's trying too hard to show how serious the DCEU can be as well as trying to copy Joker's success. Birds of Prey may not be a direct sequel to Suicide Squad, but it succeeds where that previous entry failed with much more engaging and fun characters, well done action scenes, and though it has several issues it still makes you want to see more of Robbie as Harley. Over all: 92%
2020 top list so far:
1. The Gentlemen
2. Birds of Prey
3. Bad Boys for Life