Director: Cathy Yan

Release Date: Feb. 7, 2020

Cast: Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn), Rosie Perez (Renee Montoya), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Helena Bertinelli/The Huntress), Jurnee Smollett-Bell (Dinah Lance/Black Canary), Ella Jay Basco (Cassandra Cain)

MPAA Rating: R

Our Rating: D

Picking up where “Suicide Squad” left off, “Birds of Prey” served as a sequel of sorts to Harley Quinn’s storyline. In this movie, we see Harley has broken up with the Joker and has her sights set on a new beginning. That is, until she crosses paths with Cassandra, a 12 year old girl with a bounty on her head. Due to the target put on Cassandra by the antagonist of this new story, Roman Sionis, all of Gotham is on her tail and inevitably Harley Quinn, Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya team up to protect Cassandra and defeat Roman.

The feedback this movie has received is overwhelming. Opinions stretch from praise for its female representation to a string of critiques for its poor execution.

From cast to soundtrack, it is noticeable that “Birds of Prey” intended to have powerful female role models included in the movie. The soundtrack includes unique artists such as Doja Cat, Saweetie, Summer Walker and more. Along with its talented lineup, another notable aspect of the soundtrack is that every artist featured is female. Similar to the soundtrack, women take up a majority of the roles in the movie. Showing representation and equality for all females, “Birds of Prey” introduced Renee Montoya as an openly gay character, shedding light on the LGBTQ+ community as well.

“I like how the movie included a lot of minorities and how many women were on the cast. I feel like it did a lot for the feminist movement,” freshman Cindy Lop said.

A majority of the complaints involved the movie’s unorganized storyline. The plot was bottom-line all over the place and forgettable. A reason for this is the five subplots simultaneously occurring throughout the movie. These stories follow different people in different situations and they begin to mesh and not make sense throughout the movie. It is understood that to develop a plot, the screenwriter has to come up with excuses for characters to leave their current altercation, but some of these situations just made no sense.

“I like the aesthetic of the movie, but it was kind of confusing at times because there was so much going on,” freshman Jazzmin Chavez said.

Overall, the message this movie was intending to send was admirable and their inclusion of different communities put the right people in the spotlight. We think that this movie’s downfall was their ambition to take on so many subplots. Different storylines in a film can advance the plot in many ways, but in this particular movie, it did just the opposite. We recommend this movie as  background noise for a get together, but getting invested in the story is just about impossible.

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