Birds Of Prey Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

2. The Underused Supporting Characters

The film has to cram a lot of character introductions into its mere 109-minute runtime, so it's not terribly surprising that there are a few unfortunate casualties as a result.

By far the most obviously compromised character is Huntress, who while played quite brilliantly by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the film's third act, isn't even properly introduced to the audience until well past the half-way mark.

Though we learn about her past through a snappy flashback, as a character she still feels like a thin sketch who needed significantly more screen time to truly breathe.

The same is also true of Black Mask's right-hand man Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), who while certainly an entertaining peripheral antagonist, just feels a few scenes away from being a fully fleshed-out character.

Despite the film's title, it really does feel like a Harley Quinn movie more often than not, and so while Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) are satisfactorily developed for the most part, the ensemble as a whole could've done with a lot more shading.