My anticipation for this film has been fairly low since Suicide squad was a disappointment and i just didn't know how I felt with the trailers I saw and once I saw it, I thought it was good. Not great but good.
Without question, the best thing about this film is Margot Robbie. She gets the chance and freedom to really go for it and show what she can and she fully embraces the character of Harley Quinn. The film brilliantly explores her unpredictable personality and it does well to make her different from other comic book characters and it also feels like the writers are making this up as they're going along and in a weird way, that helps the film work.
Another great thing this film does is establish and develop the characters. We know exactly who these characters are and whenever they're onscreen, they become more interesting and memorable as we learn more about them.
We also get one of the best villains in the DCEU in the form of Black Mask. Just like Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor is given the freedom to really go all out to make the role his own and it works. He is the perfect opponent for Harley Quinn as they both share the same psychotic unpredictable personality and there's also some scenes where he actually becomes quite intimidating.
And finally the action is incredible. I think this film has the best and most stylised action in the DCEU. There's no trick editing. We actually see the action for what it is and once again, there's no holding back with it. The action is brutal, fantastically choreographed and whilst I imagine there were stunt actors involved, you can really believe the actors are performing their own stunts.
Now it's time for the negative and I did have a few problems with this film. First, for me the structure felt very uneven. It felt like we were watching 3 different films. In the first act, it's a harley Quinn film, in the second act it's a birds of prey film and in the 3rd act, it's the harley Quinn and birds of prey team up movie. For me this film worked best as a Harley Quinn solo film and if they had turned into a trilogy instead of a Harley Quinn solo and birds of prey team up film, that would have worked much better.
I also feel it would have been better to make another film to help develop the characters chemistry together because whenever the titular characters are all together, I didn't feel their chemistry with Harley. The birds of prey are all dark and serious whereas Harley is dark but carefree. When she's with the birds of prey, she feels seriously out of place and her witty childish carefree attitude just loses dynamics with the birds of prey.
And as much as I loved the villains, they were also a disappointment. Whilst this film really doesn't hold back, with the villains it really feels like they're being held back a lot. Victor Zsasz is clearly mentally unstable but thats all that's scary about him. He's not a physical threat and though he reveals he's killed in his life, we barely see him kill at all and with black mask, I would have loved to have seen a lot more of him in future films but instead he gets killed off in the final act which really disappointed me.
He really had the potential to be a big enemy for Harley for future films and it really felt like there was more to explore with him. I also felt the film underutilized the relationship between black mask and Victor Zsasz like there were hints at where they were going with in their relationship but instead they never fully explored it.
Overall, now whilst I had some big problems with this film, I also felt it was a very stylized, funny and entertaining film which exceeded my expectations.
⭐⭐⭐
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