Birds of Prey

I am not a big Suicide Squad fan, but this feels like a budget version of Suicide Squad: the same kind of interchangeable plot dressed with a little edgy-teen humour to make it look 'adult'. A very vague 'you-go-girl' varnish has been added, but the toothless result look less like a Bikini Kill music video filmed by Tarantino, than like a Sheryl Sandberg instructional styled by Lady Gaga.

Despite some good ideas (i.e. Roller-skates car chase) the action scenes are not particularly convincing, in part because the choreography is uninventive, but mostly because the acting is subpar. This problem reaches beyond the stunts however: the kid is great, but the rest of the 'Birds of Prey' are too generic for anyone to care. Largely, this is because Robbie/Quinn monopolises so much of the screen time. The villains are forgettable (which is OK for the type of 'street-level' super antics the film goes for) but all in all there are few memorable scenes, characters or dialogue lines in the whole flick.

This is unfortunate because Quinn herself has potential (in fact the animated Harley Quinn series is pretty much what this film tried and failed to be. But this falls short of both being the live action equivalent, and of developing a introducing roster of compelling DC female characters.