In his second year of fighting crime, Batman uncovers corruption in Gotham City that connects to his own family while facing a serial killer known as the Riddler.
After TWO STRAIGHT YEARS of waiting for “The Batman” to finally welcome us back into Gotham, the floodgates have opened…..and every single solitary second of this wait was absolutely worth it: a living breathing graphic novel come to life wrapped tightly into nearly three hours of damn-near pitch perfection.
This hybrid mix of Zodiac, Se7en, the Telltale games and Arkham Origins sees Matt Reeves ground this detective-based story in well defined smaller chapters with the type of blueprints very obviously laced in a very anti-blockbuster approach. Similar to Joker, Reeves crafts the lore and personalities of these familiar characters around the context of their comic book origins but filters it through the lenses of a retro-modern production design that puts the rotten decaying polluted underbelly of Gotham on full display; making absolute bonfire of Greg Fraser’s immaculate cinematography and helping every single frame and angle come to life on its own.
I could recommend the film on its own for its commendable script being pure neo-noir pulp and turning a familiar story into something operatically reinvigorating but where’s the fun in that? Michael Giacchino supplies a booming, horn-heavy yet classical touch to the OST that’s both simplistically lucid and demandingly bone shattering, the tone barely edges between darkness endured audience apathy and scarce hope, an oppressively claustrophobic but anxious atmosphere takes advantage of that with well-executed action set-pieces and violence that barely stretches the PG-13 rating while keeping itself so efficiently paced that the three hour runtime hardly even matters and it didn’t take long for me to attach myself to these characters, thanks to minimal exposition and subtle thematic depth in their arcs.
It takes no time for this colorful cast of characters to turn into an entire murderers row of indelible performers that run off and trade the gamut within scene stealing seconds of one another: Pattinson, Kravitz, Serkis, Dano, Wright, Farrell, this is star power city.
Of course the story is what kept my wings clipped throughout the entire duration: what makes it so significant is how we finally got to dissect how well Batman’s detective skills fair against Riddler’s psychosis while unraveling the mystery beneath the giant strand that is Gotham’s stinky underbelly. Challenging at least two of the three of Bruce’s mind, morals, and body, similar to The Dark Knight, it’s cleverly interwoven with ideas exploring chaos, law and order, anarchy and just how far is too far to fight evil. The same socio-political stance Joker took that also tends to push the very lines that we think define us.
This unusual blend of noir-horror-detective-action-psychological thriller wrapped in a gray box with a black bow immediately alleviates any worries going in but also encourages faith in its viewer to trudge through the entire ride to unsheathe the dexterous beauty underneath its grim pastures and that faithfulness is so rewarding to watch unfold for all three acts. Movies like this are why I became infatuated with film, it’s what made me realize that this is something I want to be involved with for the rest of my life.
