BIRDS OF PREY

Crime comedy. With Margot Robbie and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Director: Cathy Yan. 16DLV. Sometime after the events of Suicide Squad (2016), master villain the Joker breaks up with his girlfriend, Harley Quinn (Robbie), which makes her a target for all those she’s wronged.

One of her enemies is gangster Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor, trying to create a memorable baddie out of thin air), who wants a diamond stolen by a young thief (Ella Jay Basco). Harley agrees to find it if Sionis spares her life, and during her search she gets mixed up with a vigilante (Winstead), a singer (Jurnee SmollettBell) and a cop (Rosie Perez).

One positive thing most critics had to say about the much-derided Suicide Squad was that Harley was the best thing in it. So it seemed inevitable that the manic psycho would get her own spinoff. But like Johnny Depp’s quirky pirate captain Jack Sparrow, Harley Quinn is best used as a supporting character who livens things up in small doses. When the story is centred on her, you realise she’s nothing more than a caricature. What’s more, she’s a nasty piece of work you can’t root for, which seems to be what the filmmakers want the viewer to do. The zany style, filled with voice-overs, animated flashbacks and scrawled captions, tries to disguise the fact that the simple plot has no surprises, and feels like a tired copy of Deadpool (2016) while the puerile jokes also pale in comparison. The male villains’ disturbing misogyny seems to serve as justification for the pain inflicted on them, but when the heroine is just as vicious and selfish it’s difficult to see her actions as female empowerment. And though the other women have more depth, they’re just a bunch of boring clichés.