Just when you’ve had it with Gotham City, caped crusaders and the whole murked-up franchise, along comes a good Batman movie — easily the best since “The Dark Knight” 14 years and an entire film industry ago.
“The Batman” keeps the lights low and the dread high, as well as makes it rainy enough to earn the forecast “cloudy with a chance of ‘Blade Runner.’” It runs a tick under three hours. Some will respond to that news with: woof. Many may find those hours a tough, deliberately paced night in movie jail, and (no surprise to the ardent fan base) the opposite of exuberant escapism.
But across several highly variable directors now, the pointy-eared DC Comics gold mine has pushed and stretched and drilled down into the rough stuff for its two-faced, psychologically riven protagonists and antagonists. It got pretty awful for the audience, too, for a while, with the Zack Snyder Batman movies.
But there’s real filmmaking here in “The Batman.” Matt Reeves, the director and co-writer, has a serious interest in the tantalizing Batman/Catwoman dynamic. His script, in collaboration with co-writer Peter Craig, parcels out the action sequences carefully, and when they arrive, they’re both visually lucid and excitingly reckless. (Some of the action scenes were filmed in Chicago in 2020.) Reeves works wonderfully with cinematographer Greig Fraser, most recently of “Dune.” Fraser lights like a master, creating sinister allure out of otherworldly interiors and perpetually moist exteriors. Together — with all the design collaborators in this organic vision of urban hell, where the underworld is the only world — he and Reeves turn “The Batman” into a full-on gangster movie edging toward film noir.
All that atmosphere needs real actors, otherwise it’s just pretty/ugly pictures on a screen. “The Batman” features a solemnly effective new Bruce Wayne/Batman (sorry, “The” Batman) courtesy of Robert Pattinson. He has a superb counterpoint/frenemy/soul mate in Zoe Kravitz’s Selina Kyle/Catwoman. In this outing, Selina works as a nightclub hostess (vaguely defined on purpose) in a mob hangout frequented by John Turturro’s Falcone, who is outfitted by sunglasses handed down, apparently, from Sam Giancana.
“Oz” Cobblepot, aka The Penguin, reports to Falcone but isn’t happy about the arrangement. He’s played by an unrecognizable Colin Farrell, and it’s one of the movie’s limitations. His subtly repulsive and nicely detailed performance is ready to rip, and indeed Farrell’s Penguin will get his stand-alone HBO Max spinoff soon enough, but fewer prosthetics and a little more of the actor’s actual mug wouldn’t hurt. Meanwhile, Andy Serkis as Wayne’s guardian Alfred Pennyworth is lovely, a naturally civilized antidote to all the hellishness swirling around him.
Set around Halloween, “The Batman” introduces Pattinson in full “Taxi Driver” voice-over mode, muttering about how “two years of nights (in Batman guise) have turned me into a nocturnal animal.” A serial killer known as The Riddler (Paul Dano, heavily masked and in shadow for most of the film) stalks Gotham and targets an array of hypocritical authority figures, be they police or criminals or freelance dark knights. Here “The Batman” veers perilously near the grisly, nihilistic territory of David Fincher’s “Seven,” as this word-game enthusiast drives Commissioner James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright, huge asset) to distraction, along with Gordon’s crime-fighting associate with the cape.
The source material for “The Batman” comes from various inspirations, including “Batman: The Long Halloween,” by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, and “Batman: Year One,” by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. The motifs of damaged souls seeking either the light or utter moral darkness are not new. Neither are the general contours of the movie’s gangster underworld plot. Reeves, I think, lets the audience get out ahead of some predictable developments in the second half.
But there’s sweep and a grave sort of majesty to the best of “The Batman.” Working a stunningly wide dramatic range, composer Michael Giacchino delivers one of his greatest scores, including a gorgeous “Catwoman” theme blending a ‘60s heist picture with a dishy French '60s romance, doomed romance division.
The real enemy of “The Batman” came out in 2019: “Joker” is a film I hate; it’s also a film trafficking in many of the same punishing impulses guiding Reeves’ superior effort. Will audiences be up for another dose of Gotham on the brink? I didn’t think I’d hope so. But I do, even with this film’s flaws and attenuations.
All it takes for Gotham, aka America, to give into pure chaos, is simple: “fear, and a little focused violence,” according to Dano’s Riddler. Director Todd Phillips’ “Joker” sold the same idea far more crudely, and with a sneaky affirmation. (It’s the highest-grossing R-rated film in history.) “The Batman,” rated PG-13 but barely, plays all the sides of Gotham’s mean streets more compellingly, and without mainlining the viciousness “Joker” style. I don’t know if we needed “The Batman,” but Reeves and company certainly elevated it.
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‘THE BATMAN’
3 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for strong violent and disturbing content, drug content, strong language, and some suggestive material)
Running time: 2:56
Where to watch: In theaters Friday
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