Birds of PreySave

Gotham, present day. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) narrates her own film via a fourth-wall-breaking opening monologue with an animated explainer of her own life. She has just broken up with the Joker — they've been together since their Arkham Asylum days, but the relationship has finally ended after months of fights. Harley is depressed. She has been wearing pajamas for a week. She has gotten her hair dyed pink and blue. She has been ordering Chinese food in bulk. She has been eating an entire jar of peanut butter with a spoon while watching TV.

Public emancipation. To publicly announce that she's no longer with the Joker — which would normally signal that she's no longer protected by his criminal-overlord status in Gotham — Harley breaks into the Ace Chemicals plant where she had originally been transformed into the Joker's accomplice years earlier. She brings a fuel truck. She lights the entire plant on fire. The explosion rocks downtown Gotham. The Joker's name is no longer on Harley's protection. Every villain Harley has ever crossed — Black Mask, the Penguin's lieutenants, Tony Two-Face, dozens of mob bosses — now have an open invitation to settle scores with her.

Roman Sionis. Black Mask — Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) — is Gotham's mid-tier crime boss. He's been quietly building a criminal empire from his Black Mask Club, a high-end nightclub-and-mob-headquarters in downtown Gotham. He's also a sadistic narcissist with an obsessive habit of having his lieutenant Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina) carve his enemies' faces off with a switchblade as trophies. Sionis collects severed faces in a small velvet trophy case behind his bar. He's been searching for a specific item — the Bertinelli diamond, an heirloom gem stolen from the Bertinelli mob family's vault forty years ago that he believes contains the encryption keys to access the Bertinelli family's billion-dollar offshore accounts. He'd recently learned the diamond had resurfaced — pickpocketed by a teenage street kid.

Cassandra Cain. The teenage pickpocket is Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), age 13, a Korean-American-Latina girl who has been working East Side Gotham streets for a year. She's been homeless since her foster parents kicked her out. She has a small Black Mask Club coat-check job she's been holding down. While working at the coat check, she pickpockets a velvet pouch from a mid-tier gangster — the same pouch that contains the Bertinelli diamond. Recognizing the danger of holding the gem, Cassandra swallows the diamond to hide it before her arrest. She's then booked into Gotham PD's lockup, where the gem remains in her digestive system.

Black Mask's hunt. Sionis is furious. He sends Victor Zsasz and his enforcers to find Cassandra and kill her — slicing her open to retrieve the diamond before her digestive system disposes of it. He also puts a $500,000 bounty on Cassandra's head and every other Gotham villain Harley has ever crossed is now hunting both Harley AND Cassandra.

Helena Bertinelli. Meanwhile, the Bertinelli mob family had been killed in a Mafia hit forty years ago. The only survivor of the original Bertinelli family is Helena Bertinelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), now in her thirties, who has been training in covert combat techniques in Italy for two decades — she's been preparing to track down and kill the Mafia families responsible for her family's massacre. She's the Huntress — a crossbow-wielding vigilante in tactical purple-and-black armor. She's been quietly killing the Mafia hitmen one by one. She's now in Gotham hunting the final two men on her revenge list, who are coincidentally both Black Mask's lieutenants.

Black Canary. Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett) is the lounge singer at Sionis's Black Mask Club and Sionis's personal driver. She's been working for Sionis for two years, hiding her own metahuman power — a sonic-scream-amplified blast that can shatter glass and stun targets within thirty feet. She's been raising her younger half-brother on her own. She's been quietly looking for an out from Sionis's organization.

Renee Montoya. Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) is a Gotham PD detective who has spent her entire career trying to investigate Sionis's criminal empire. Her colleagues have been corrupted or intimidated. She's been collecting evidence of Sionis's face-cutting trophy collection but can't move forward because internal affairs has been blocking her warrants. She's bitter, divorced, and on the edge of retirement. She's been recently demoted for repeatedly antagonizing her precinct captain.

Convergence at the breakfast diner. Harley, having heard about Cassandra's situation, decides to find the girl first before anyone else does. The film's most-quoted set piece is Harley's egg-sandwich scene — Harley at a 24-hour Gotham diner sharing a $4 breakfast egg sandwich with Cassandra while explaining that they are both about to die. The egg-sandwich-shooting scene that follows (every villain in Gotham bursts into the diner and Harley has to defend Cassandra with a baseball bat while the egg sandwich remains intact on the counter) became the film's iconic moment. The set piece is filmed in slow-motion with Harley's color-coordinated combat moves and the egg sandwich as the central visual focus.

Booby Trap. Harley brings Cassandra to her Brooklyn-style Gotham apartment — a chaotic, brightly-decorated, hyena-occupied loft where Harley has been hiding out. She befriends Cassandra. She decides to use the diamond bounty money to escape Gotham with Cassandra. Then Black Mask's army surrounds Harley's apartment. Harley and Cassandra escape to the only place in Gotham Black Mask doesn't own — the Booby Trap, an old abandoned Gotham amusement park's fun-house ride. Helena, Dinah, and Renee Montoya have all separately traced Harley to the Booby Trap (each for different reasons — Helena because Sionis's lieutenants are on her hit list; Dinah because she's been alerted to Cassandra's situation; Renee because she's been tracking Sionis).

The Birds of Prey form. At the Booby Trap, the four women — Harley, Helena (Huntress), Dinah (Black Canary), and Renee Montoya — converge as Black Mask's army of fifty mercenaries breaks in. They fight together for the first time. Each one has a distinct fighting style — Harley's improvised baseball-bat-and-roller-skates physical chaos, Helena's tactical crossbow precision, Dinah's sonic scream attacks, Renee's police-detective tactical training. The Booby Trap is destroyed in a fifteen-minute action set piece. Black Mask is killed (Harley pushes him off the funhouse's wooden roller coaster track at the climax). Victor Zsasz is killed (Helena impales him with a crossbow bolt).

Aftermath. Cassandra is taken in by Renee Montoya (the only non-superhero of the team) as her foster daughter. Helena Bertinelli takes the Bertinelli diamond and the family's offshore accounts back into her control. She finally has the financial resources to retire her revenge mission. She has the resources to start a small private-investigation firm with Dinah and Renee. The three of them — Helena Huntress, Dinah Black Canary, and Renee Montoya — form a vigilante team they call the Birds of Prey.

Harley leaves. Harley, having freed herself from Joker's shadow, finally takes Cassandra and the recovered bounty money and leaves Gotham for somewhere new. She buys a small ice cream truck. She drives across the bridge out of Gotham with her pet hyena Bruce (named after Bruce Wayne) and Cassandra in the passenger seat. The film's final shot is Harley driving into the dawn — finally free of the Joker, free of Black Mask, and on her way to her next chaotic adventure. Cut to credits.

Coda. The film's mid-credits scene is silent. Harley's voice-over plays over a black screen. "Did you ever hear the one about the Bat?" Cut to credits. The Joker is never explicitly seen in this film — Jared Leto's Joker had been written into earlier drafts but his scenes were cut after Warner Bros' decision to minimize Leto's involvement in the post-Suicide Squad era of the DCEU. The film closes the Harley Quinn solo-film era. Margot Robbie's Harley would return in The Suicide Squad (2021), James Gunn's R-rated reboot, which is a different continuity from this film.