movie review

Messy but pulpy Birds of Prey pecks away at comic book misogyny

Clearly, Birds of Prey is attempting to kill myriad birds with one stone.

The movie — which can also be titled Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) — aspires to conquer much in one outing. First off, it’s a stand-alone vehicle for Harley Quinn (played here by Margot Robbie), who we last saw going bonkers in Suicide Squad.

Here, the Arkham Asylum psychologist-turned-sociopathic moll is out on her own after the Joker, her main squeeze, literally kicks her to the curb. (Don’t even bother looking for Squad co-star Jared Leto to do his glam-punk version of Joker in this one. His manic mug doesn’t even appear in the flashback scenes from Squad.)

The movie also serves as an origin story for the titular crew of DC Comics superladies who fight crime in Gotham City when Batman seems to be detained. Sadly, founding member Batgirl is nowhere to be found, but we do get Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), seen here as a torch singer with a voice that can apparently obliterate throngs of weapon-wielding men, and Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a socially awkward assassin who returns to Gotham to take out the men who killed her entire family.

Prey doesn’t even try to stick to the DC canon. Director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hodson have basically taken several female characters — whether they’ve actually collaborated in the DC universe or not — and just placed them together in the same movie.

Also along for this ferociously feminine ride is embittered lesbian detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) and foster kid/professional pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). All these women eventually become the target of club owner/sadistic crime lord Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor, camping it up all to hell), aka Black Mask, forcing them at the end to team up and become a ragtag girl-gang once he sics more bad guys on them.

Naysaying men on Twitter who’ve been predicting Prey’s failure at the box office will likely take issue with how males are portrayed in it. In this version of Gotham, the male population is made up of predators, misogynists, women-hating killers, and men who’ll sell a woman out with no qualms. (The only decent guy is the greasy-spoon cook who serves Quinn a delicious-looking egg sandwich at the beginning.)

To wit: It’s almost like Yan, Hodson, and Robbie decided to use Prey to troll all the dudebros and fanboys who constantly bellyache about women squeezing themselves into their pitifully male, Comic-Con universe. They not-so-subtly give them the business by having Quinn and company go to town on any creepy, pervy dude with which they come in contact.

It’s a shame the movie is too much of a messy pile-on. It’s obvious that the filmmakers threw a lot in here on the off-chance that this kind of cinematic girl-power may never happen again. Prey ends up having an off-kilter rhythm, often teetering between being entertainingly chaotic and tonally clumsy. However, out of all the DC Extended Universe movies, this one looks the most comic book-y, with its deliriously over-the-top action sequences and gloriously pulpy milieu.

And it’s all anchored by Robbie’s foul-mouthed, fourth-wall-breaking anti-heroine.

Margot Robbie in Birds of Prey.

Margot Robbie in Birds of Prey

Photo by Claudette Barius; courtesy of DC Comics

Margot Robbie in Birds of Prey.

Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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