The Batman Review
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Cinephiles and gamer geeks alike, I have seen the Batman and I’m happy to report, it’s generally pretty good. This is one of the first movies I’ve seen since the pandemic started whose production quality doesn’t seem hampered by covid compliance or crunch. Movies like Remembrance, Dune with its choppy pace and weird lag on its own opening panning shots, etc have just felt sloppy or hollow and Batman feels like smooth and responsive like Doom Eternal on PC or something…sorry, I don’t know any real analogies real people understand.
This is not a Bond movie like Nolan’s films, but a neo noir. It also has some horror elements, like the Riddler’s chilling introduction. But it’s primarily follow the breadcrumb trail to find the killer plot that has fun with the theatricality of Batman’s rogues gallery, gets him on the streets digging for clues instead of just superheroics, and the movie centers around a struggle for the souls of Gotham as Batman warily works with a shady police department to stop the Riddler who’s assassinating his way through corrupt elites, all while wrestling with increasing evidence that his own family may have been complicit in the criminality of the city all along. Batma must keep his own dark inheritance at bay while protecting Gotham from dangers without and make sure that what’s saved isn’t worse off than before. So let’s get into the nitty gritty of whether this film delivers!
STORY IMPRESSIONS
Visually and thematically, the movie is about Gotham’s minutiae, its alleyways, its shadows, its secrets. The city crisis porn of Nolan’s films is fun, but Reeves’s is more akin to what if the Jigsaw Killer existed in a Bogart gumshoe tale. It has a classical sensibility from its score and inclusion of Ave Maria as a plot detail and emphasis on inspiring cinematography especially towards the end. But it’s always pitched as hyper realist and rarely feels just like escapism, which is a strength of the movie. In fact, from the red-toned color palette to the grittier, more intimate storyline, I can definitely imagine that the recent Daredevil series had quite an influence. There’s femme fatales, back alley dealings and intrigue and the plot moves forward methodically but confidently and so it’s rarely boring. The only major misstep in storytelling is the completely contrived third act that undoes all the finality of the 2nd act with poorly executed action set pieces that seem beyond Reeves’s capabilities or the movie’s grounded tone. What will become the theme of this review is that even as the movie stumbles right and left with
PERFORMANCES
Performances are generally pretty good with only a couple important caveats. Pattinson’s emo Batman is withdrawn enough to feel like a man actually crippled by trauma like Batman also says he is but seems to be coping magnificently with. I actually respect him being more like the Crow than the platitude spewing guy from the animated series. There’s even some interesting critique of his perspective as a traumatized but still very well off orphan who won’t experience many of the same things other might who have less. Moments like these are great, as Bruce seems to have an implied arc but he’s oddly removed from feeling like the point of the story, more of an expected ferryman to help other more interesting characters cross their river styx’s and complete their arcs. He seems beholden to big ideas about who Batman should be and on paper as a beginner concept, I like it where the movie goes. But it doesn’t feel like it’s often happening as much to the Batman on the screen, but to the idea of Batman. We weren’t exactly starving for new Batman content as it is, so the movie, despite its clearly passionate creative intent, doesn’t always convince me it needs to exist, and that Batman himself is truly a character but more a wraith passing through a Batman fever dream whose shorthand we’ve grown accustomed to and probably grown a little tired of.
All that aside though, Pattinson’s eye acting is on point. Sustained shots of him thinking intently beneath the mask sound boring to explain but they’re often pretty enjoyable, surprisingly illuminating moments that invite us to incline our ears and minds a bit closer to see what happens next. While I don’t know if Pattinson’s nearly tough looking enough to be anything but Sadman instead of Batman, I do think he’s an actor who can dig as deep as the series requires of him. I’d like to see a little more aggression and less passive angst, for his voice to become more of a snarl and less a whisper. Get in there, Batman!
As for the side characters, Andy Serkis as Alfred is a weird casting and not entirely revelatory here but he does have one great scene where Bruce intimates to Alfred that his longtime best friend being in danger made him confront a fear of losing loved ones he thought he’d conquered and hadn’t. It’s real and human and a consideration most Batman films don’t acknowledge.
Jeffrey Wright is such a good choice for Jim Gordon. I love his weary “mannn” whenever he talks to Batman, like his “It’s been two years and I don’t even know who you are, mannn” That “you’re exhausting but I’m down for it” relationship is on point. That being said, his casting often feels a little underutilized. He’s a convenient help and sort of does what Gordon does but he’s really just a sidepiece and therefore as he fades from the plot’s memory, so does he everywhere else. Maybe it’s because he’s not commissioner yet, but it seems a fault of this movie as that happens with Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman.
I generally like her plucky performance, and her youth and fieriness jive a lot better with the character’s cavalier, survivalist lifestyle. It just makes more sense she’d be desperate and passionate instead of just cool and collected and middle aged. Her initial scenes give her good motivation and agency but she disappears for so long in the movie that she becomes irrelevant and her romance with Bats feels perfunctory and “because we can.” She’s good here but underutilized.
The villains are generally pretty good fun with only some caveats. Carmine Falcone, in a turn from awesome actor John Turturro whom I’ve missed in cinema recently, does his best to imbue sleazy menace in his minimal screentime for someone who’s really a lynchpin character for the plot to work. I like his work here even if it’s relatively plain for someone with his level of idiosyncratic talent.
I also really liked Penguin in this. He looks PITCH PERFECT and Colin Farrell’s unrecognizably masked performance is funny, quirky, and creepy. I dug it! He’s also getting his own series and that sounds strangely captivating because this Penguin has a Heath Ledger Joker “I just want to see this guy riff” quality. He’s got some of the best lines and just couldn’t look or feel more like the Penguin.
So Riddler…hmm. Paul Dano’s a heavy hitter but this performance feels initially terrifying and fun like some horrible mashup of the Jigsaw Killer and the Collector. Riddler’s often lame and here he’s some crazed street level terror and I like that. The complexity of finding out his riddles is really more of the good guys misunderstanding clues more than the Riddler’s genius though. Overall, his greatest strength is that he feels dangerous and he seems to be the only character who has enough of a interesting background that I wanted to discover it and also get a feel for his justification for his actions. The movie leaves his worst scenes for last though when he goes from real threat to scenery chewing camp and we’ll discuss that and more now in in the spoiler section.
SPOILERS:
I want to get into a lot of little nagging problems I saw real quick before getting into the plot. Like Selina misses at close range with a pistol when aiming at her father Falcone. The movie seems to be saying it was because Batman turned the lights off but she misses before the lights go out. And Penguin doesn’t even draw his weapon but somehow still shoots Falcone; it’s implied later that it was the Riddler with a sniper rifle, which is what you’d think would happen, but it’s sort of weirdly unclear in film language terms what the cause and effect was. And the mayor to be gets shot in the abdomen with a sniper rifle and she later is hanging out just fine in the water, no problem moving through a flooded area. Ummm. This movie has no fucking idea how guns work, as we’ll touch on shortly.
Also, Batman, get away from the fucking bomb on the DA Colson, you rube. There’s a timer right in front of you. That the movie tries to make this feel very calculated and real makes these extremely stupid tonal and logical errors all the more distracting and irritating.
What was with that ridiculous overacting in the Riddler interrogation scene? I mean the conflict here of whether Batman’s about to be outed is a cool little ticking time bomb in the scene but Dano’s shrieky theatrics here are repetitive and irritating instead of fun and at hyper realistic. Just no.
It’s become a recent fad over the last decade or so to start impugning Thomas and Martha Wayne, who apparently opened up a slush fun masquerading as a fund for the neglected orphanaged the Riddler grew up in. This is the part of Riddler’s anger that makes some sense even if it feels a little removed and like a story that happened somewhere far away that the movie’s trying to convince us still matters. There’s a plot dump from the Riddler here and it really asks the audience to internalize a lot of motivation and care very quickly for the denouement and Batman’s internal conflict to matter at all.
Okay, let’s talk about that ridiculous setpiece at the mayoral event that directly follows the uneven interrogation scene. So the Riddler, unbeknownst to us, has been inspiring a copycat terrorist cell to take up arms and somehow get all the way to the top of an extremely well guarded mayoral event with high-powered rifles. Up to this point, he’s only tried to kill those people he thinks are harming the city and yet here he is, willing to kill a mayor elect that hasn’t transgressed him in any way, not to mention countless random citizens whom he has no motive to kill. And the whiplash continues: when Batman swoops in, he blows every motherfucking pane of glass in the ceiling as he swoops down on them, endangering countless citizens. The fight that ensues makes no sense, as Batman can’t take some shots point blank but others he shrugs off. Finally he falls and dangles above but somehow in full view of like five guys, they can’t hit him a single time as he slowly moves around. Then he has the bright idea to cut the rope he’s holding and not just hold the rope above where’s he’s cutting so he doesn’t fall. Oh but that would mean he can’t fall and be baptized in floodwater and lead the people on the other side of a very traversable piece of rubble to another flooded portion of the venue, presumably useful because his flarelight will lead them to the promised land of hope and tranquility. Wait, I get the idea here but it’s so contrived and such a put on since he’s not really helping them here, just making a big, symbolic deal out of himself and to be honest, you’ve not made me care about this arc of vengeance turning into beacon of hope business, so I find it disingenuous and offputting when it then becomes the moral of the movie like it was there all along.
But because I’ve been awfully negative here, let’s not forget how fucking cool looking that fight scene in the dark where you get to see it freeze frame style as it’s lit up intermittently by the muzzle flush of gunfire as Batman wades through those thugs. And while the logic of the fight is convenient and Batman’s disregard for citizenry is concerning, the introduction of the Batman as a living, seething dragon from hell was one of the coolest fucking things I’ve ever seen. Absolute kudos to Reeves and co for having this much fun with this aspect of the character and for being so surprising at that point in the film.
VERDICT
What the movie gets right though is what I call a polished pulp feel, horrifying and punchy but operatic and classical at the same time. The modulation between these styles makes the movie pleasant to watch most of the way throughout as it just feels really good and really cool. That being said, what felt off to me was the false ending where it seems like all the evils have been vanquished only for them to kind of arbitrarily raise their head again somewhere else we didn’t even know as an audience was possible. There’s a big Nolanesque setpiece that doesn’t make much sense from the villains’ perspective and seems almost entirely crafted to satisfy an audience’s need for an explosive finale and also as a justification for some rather lofty symbolism.
There’s a weird tug of war between being shorthand with Batman details so as not to bore the audience or re explain what we already expect and vagueness or lack of depth and logic, which is unfortunate since this is supposed to be the detective movie. But the Riddler’s only got one relatively clever little wordplay that stumps Batman and Gordon for a second before they figure that out too. The movie has a bad habit of little bullet explanations for what we as the audience were just shown to make sure we don’t miss it, but we have no need of such an obvious call out for these things. Instead, I’d like a little less ambiguity in the Riddler interrogation scene later where we learn about he and Bruce Wayne’s connection and bring together the Ave Maria plot detail that while not crucial to understanding what’s going on does grant depth.
I would still maintain this Batman is dour but not particularly scary. He doesn’t have a ton of rage problems unless given a shot of adrenaline later on in the movie, and honestly, he’s already capable instead of crazed and I do miss that opportunity to see Batman not just be a goody two shoes already. Being glum does not make instantly compelling.
As grounded as this Batman tries to be, there’s an awful lot of sort of weird, convenient or stupid things that happen. Characters have a habit of saying really obvious shit like they’ll figure out a clue that’s just been clearly shown visually to the audience and then have to verbally affirm this same information. This happened like five times. There’s also a level of campy ease with which criminals conveniently congregate and constantly make boneheaded admissions of guilt or carry out all the incriminating crimes themselves instead of having hard to trace lackeys do it. That was pretty goofy. The movie has lots of false endings and just keeps going and doesn’t always seem to justify where its going or properly prepare you to be excited for what could happen.
This movie is just good, it’s just not a masterpiece for the ages. This review was hard to write because I enjoyed the film overall, and every time I had a negative or positive thing to say about it I instantly had a comeback for myself, like how the shorthand of Batman lore like your obligatory Alfred scoldings or monologues about fear feel tired but also necessary to convince the audience you know what property you’re dealing with so they can confidently follow you into more original ideas.
Overall, the vibe is right and despite it being a whopping 3 hrs long, it needs a little more detail in multiple areas. The movie’s never truly boring, has some good jokes, some intense and awesome set pieces and effects, and shows an appreciation for Batman I don’t think can be undone even by sometimes uninspired takes on the material. Pattinson’s solid if a little passive, the casting across the board is really solid, and you’ll have a good time and not even realize 3 hrs has passed. At the same time, you may also be part of the group of folks that enjoy the movie but wish it was more because of how clearly passionate Reeves and company are about the source material.
Okay, I made up this grading system in the shower last night after I saw the movie so sue me. It’s a four scale grade system: nonfunctioning for bad, medium for decent, high functioning medium for pretty good with some noticeable, or high functioning for a pretty great movie. I give the Batman a very high functioning medium, not amazing but pretty good. Definitely worth a theater showing at least once. I’ll be seeing it again in theaters for sure, although I did see the Dark Knight Rises three times and that was a fun but flawed movie and I have seen Avatar twice, one of the biggest pieces of shit ever so yknow, treat my recommendation with granular sodium. If not in theathers though, definitely catch it on HBO Max when it comes back out 45 days after its theatrical run ends. You’d have to be batshit crazy not to check it out!
