We’ve seen the man become the bat plenty of times. In Matt Reeves’ The Batman, we see the bat become a man again. The Batman, a singularly gloomy noir caper that feels stylistically more akin to Se7en than The Dark Knight, presents one of the most distinctive versions of the iconic “superhero” (that term is used very loosely here) to ever grace the screen. Reeves’ vision is a far cry from the rinse-repeat superhero fare that so frequently pummels their way through the multiplexes. There’s sparse humor or frivolity and even less charm. As much as Batman can be grounded, stripped down to his essence as a character, and seen for the disturbed outsider that he truly is, this is what Reeves seeks to accomplish. And he largely does just that.
Yes, we’ve seen “gritty” takes on Batman before but he’s never been this openly damaged. Deranged even. A sweeping crime saga, Reeves’ is a film of consequence and precision, both unsettling and unwavering, that takes a hard look at the collapse of crumbling empires and the moral decay of the men left inside. The Batman is no hero. He’s a beacon of revenge, a blunt instrument deployed by the police when their jurisdiction ends. He’s also – finally – an accomplished sleuth.
No live action Batman film has attempted to truly dig into the character as the “World’s Greatest Detective” in quite the way that The Batman does. A string of clues courtesy of The Riddler (Paul Dano), leads Robert Pattinson’s Batman from a gruesome crime scene where the mayor has been murdered to the city’s criminal underbelly and back again. Along the way, he’ll spy the political elite rubbing elbows with the shady Gotham crime families and try to piece together a string of conspiracies that trace all the way back to the Wayne family. Aided by Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), Officer James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) and feline deuteragonist Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), the masked vigilante investigates suspects Oswald Cobblepott (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell) and crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).
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The unambiguously deadpan serious script from Reeves and Peter Craig (The Town) unspools a shady noir that feels straight out of the 1940s, dialogue included. The language can feel a bit stiff at times and lacks the poetry of some of the finest Batman writing but Reeves’ greatest strength has always been his abilities as a visual storyteller and he succeeds ably here. Quite simply, The Batman looks wholly of its own. Gloomy, rainy, and spilling over with grimy personality, Gotham is a fully realized city, occupied by a rogues gallery of scum and villainy. This feels more like the most celebrated issues of the comics’ run or imported from the popular Arkham video games than it does in tune with previous Batman films, Reeves and company truly delivering a one-of-a-kind portrait of a major metropolitan city swallowed by institutional corruption and unrelenting crime.
The awe-inspiring work of cinematographer Greig Fraser helps bring the internal shades of the film to life in harrowing blacks and grays and explosive burnt oranges, particularly in the final act. When taken in alongside Michael Giacchino’s simple (in an unfussy way), commanding score, The Batman is a work of audio-visual technical mastery, capable of transporting the audience out of the cinema and right into the comic book page.
In every preceding live-action iteration of Batman, we see Bruce Wayne moonlighting as Batman. The man escapes behind a mask to become something greater. A legend. A hero. A myth. An avenger of wrongs and dutiful servant of good. He’s morally gray at times, certainly, but there’s no doubt that Bruce Wayne is the hero of the story. Here, Batman moonlights as Bruce Wayne. And he hardly does that. Bruce Wayne is the mask. Batman is the true self. And he’s no hero. This is a story about a man who wears a mask so long that he becomes that mask. A scowl in a cowl looking down upon a rotting city in judgement. Blood-thirsty to exact revenge precisely as he sees fit.
[READ MORE: Our review of ‘Zack Synder’s Justice League’ starring Ben Affleck as Batman]
Pattinson’s take on Batman is as distinctive as any: wrathful, raging. Psychopathic even. He’s the Darkest Knight yet by a long shot. A reclusive goth stripped of the usual playboy charm that defines Bruce Wayne. There’s no double life, no duality between Bruce and Bats. Bruce is consumed by his darkness. This is not a man who’s even capable of keeping up appearances, who has abandoned any public-facing life outside the cowl. If Batman once merely adopted the dark, here Bruce never slunk out of it. He lives in shadow because he can’t take that first step into the light.
The Batman‘s thematic heft is found in the symmetry between its “hero” and villain: both outcasts raging at the dying of the light. Each become their true selves when they put on their masks and, like the Joker before him, the Riddler is a consequence of Batman’s brand of vigilantism. Depicting The Riddler as a straight-up serial killer is not a far cry from some of his best comic arcs and he’s used effectively as a crux to examine Batman’s dubious moralism and greater effect on society. Batman and Riddler each use violence as a means to an end, to achieve justice as they envision it. The Batman’s scorched earth policy has – by his own admission – done nothing to curtail crime. In fact, he admits in smoky voice-over that in the two years that he’s been running around fighting crime by moonlight, crime statistics have only increased..Fear is a weapon and one that Batman deploys effectively. But sometimes bringing the right weapon to the battlefield just leads to more battle.
Imposingly long, The Batman takes its sweet time developing a crucible of heroism but by the end of the ride, audiences are certain to appreciate the efforts Reeves takes to present a truly new dimension of this iconic character then setting him on an interesting trajectory forward. Certain elements are frightfully topical – The Riddler’s 4chan-inspired message board villainy and seething incel energy reflect the epidemic of mass shootings and the Capitol Riots both – and certainly don’t lend themselves to an optimistic outlook of society writ large. But as Batman has so often reflected our cultural anxieties and the prevailing grey moralism of America, so too does The Batman step into the light and offer a flicker of hope. Or – dare I say – justice?
CONCLUSION: ‘The Batman’ represents a bold step in a new direction for the character, digging into his prowess as a detective while forgoing the normal heroism. This reveals a portrait of a wrathful man on the edge with questionable motives, a mirror of the very villain he seeks to take down. Tactful, sharp, and brimming with technical mastery, ‘The Batman’ is a singular vision of the darkest side of the men we deem heroes.
B+
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By: Matt Oakes
Matt Oakes is the founder and editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot. A Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes, he’s a founding member of the Seattle Film Critics Society and a member of the Online Film Critics Society. He started writing about movies in college, when the university paper wouldn’t have him, and has been reviewing ever since, covering festivals like Sundance and SIFF along the way. He has a soft spot for horror movies that make him die a little inside, a healthy skepticism of film Twitter’s consensus favorites, and a philosophy degree he swears is relevant. He’s based in Seattle.
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