The Batman

If you thought The Lego Movie’s wickedly funny lampooning of the Christopher Nolan-era Batman as a self-declared “bad boy” would encourage future filmmakers to mellow the Dark Knight, guess again. In Matt Reeves’ The Batman, he’s dourer than ever. “They think I’m hiding in the shadows," we hear him mumble in a Travis Bickle-esque voiceover. "I am the shadows! I am vengence.” He then proceeds to beat a gang of teen hoodlums to a pulp.

While Robert Pattinson’s brooding Caped Crusader is familiar, bordering on parody, his take on Bruce Wayne is pleasingly fresh. Instead of the playboy technocrat portrayed by the likes of Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck, here we get a floppy-haired sad boy who’s set on squandering his vast inheritance on his mission to clean up Gotham's streets. The first time we see him without the bat mask, he's sporting jet-black remnants of his Batman get-up that are streaked with sweat and running down his cheeks; it's a look that suggests The Cure’s Robert Smith after watching Terms of Endearment.

Also novel is The Batman's plot. Light on the action spectacle of your average superhero flick, The Batman is essentially a crypto serial-killer film. The first scene in the movie is from the point-of-view of Paul Dano’s demented Riddler as he observes his first victim through binoculars, his heavy breathing acting as the score. It's an image that calls to mind Manhunter while his series of grizzly murders of Gotham’s high-ranking officials is essentially Jon Doe's punitive crime spree from Se7en by way of the Saw franchise.

So there's a great detective movie buried in this three-hour superhero epic. Pattison’s vigilante teams up with good apple cop Jim Gordon (Wright) to solve The Riddler’s series of clues, and this investigation intersects with another being conducted by a savvy cocktail waitress/cat-burglar named Selina Kyle (Kravitz), whose roommate has gone missing. Sparks fly when the cat and the bat are together – this is easily the horniest Batman movie since the Burton era – and their scenes of sexually-charged sleuthing are the strongest in the movie.

Unfortunately, Reeves isn’t content with simply telling a good detective yarn. He's also crowbarred in a Sidney Lumet-style corruption drama involving Gotham’s crime lords and politicians, along with all the deadening action spectacle the genre demands. A night-time car chase down a rain-slicked highway in which mid-level gangster Penguin (an unrecognisable Colin Farrell) is pursued by a steampunk Batmobile is an adrenaline-filled highlight but it’s also a non-sequitur, ultimately adding nothing to the already overstuffed film.

Perhaps the baggy plot could be forgiven if Matt Reeves had brought more visual innovation to the table. After jumping on the found-footage bandwagon with Cloverfield, Reeves has been content to stolidly reimagine other people’s visions, with solid but unremarkable remakes (Let Me In) and sequels (the final two instalments of The Planet of the Apes trilogy, itself a reboot) dominating his CV. The Batman continues this pattern. Say what you want about Zack Snyder's bombastic vision – at least it's an ethos. 

On the whole, however, The Batman satisfies. It may continually remind you of other films – the aforementioned work by Mann, Fincher and Lumet – but at least this magpie director is pinching from the best. Reeves also has some wise observations about the toxic nature of Batman’s vendetta and has a compelling take on Bruce Wayne’s family legacy in Gotham. Near its climax, it’s even suggested that Batman may take an alternative path to being a hero that doesn’t involve punching criminals really hard in the face, although one suspects this epiphany will be forgotten in the sequel that’s basically guaranteed in The Batman’s closing minutes.

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Out now via Warner Bros
We also discuss The Batman in the latest edition of The CineSkinny podcast from 7:25; listen in the player below or wherever you get your podcasts...