![]() “Joker,” indebted to the sweatily atmospheric New York crime pictures of Martin Scorsese, is a bleak and brooding character study, thick with doomy portent and disturbing psychological undercurrents. Whether we will ever see Robbie and Phoenix team up for a Harley-Joker reunion is unclear, though personally I hope not it is hard to imagine their characters occupying the same Gotham City, let alone the same movie. You might say that the whole movie - a fast, cheap and carefully controlled distraction from the bigger, heavier goings-on at the DC Comics blockbuster factory - has successfully emancipated itself from the dead weight of Leto’s Joker, a cinematic non-starter that was recently eclipsed by Joaquin Phoenix’s superior, soon-to-be-Oscar-winning upgrade. Mercifully, the Joker is nowhere to be seen in “Birds of Prey,” a sleek, diverting, hyper-violent new caper that arrives bearing the cheeky subtitle “(and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).” She isn’t the only one who’s been emancipated. ![]() Clearly, not even the most irrational mind would want to go home with this joyless, juiceless excuse for a super-villain. It’s an unusually strained moment, and surely no fault of Robbie, a versatile actress with a Cheshire cat’s grin who was always a good match for Harley’s brand of lunacy. “Puddin’!” she squealed at the sight of her green-haired paramour, though if you watch that scene again, you may find her delight more forced than persuasive. The last time we saw Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), in the very last scene of “Suicide Squad,” she was happily reading a book and sipping an espresso behind bars, only to find herself suddenly freed by her boyfriend, the Joker (Jared Leto).
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