Excluding the classic serials and Adam West’s lone TV-to-big screen offering in the 1960s, we’ve had eight Batman movies in the ensuing decades – nine if you include the character’s team-up efforts in 2017’s Justice League. Throughout these cinematic exploits we’ve seen the Caped Crusader fight unhinged clowns (twice), foil city-wide takeovers (also twice), battle ninjas, ice-skate, pick a fight with an alien superhero, save the planet from a spiky demigod, and more. And yet, in all these adventures, there’s one thing Batman has never actually done properly on-screen before despite it being the backbone of his original comic book appearances: Solve a crime.

With The Batman – writer/director Matt Reeves’ grungy big-screen reboot of the character – somebody in Hollywood finally remembered that what has made Batman into one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, is that he can do more than just punch things and be rich enough to afford fancy gadgets. Oh, new Batman actor Robert Pattinson gets plenty of punching to do and gadgetry to deploy, have no doubts about that! (More on that later.) But being one of those rare blockbuster auteurs that can balance widescreen eye-popping spectacle with intimate and insightful characterization, Reeves also knows that more than fisticuffs and grappling hooks, the Dark Knight’s actual greatest weapon is his mind. It’s his unwavering, possessed determination combined with his genius-level intellect that has allowed him to stand shoulder to shoulder with gods. Yet somehow we’ve never seen this aspect of the “World’s Greatest Detective” truly adapted to the big screen before.

And so, The Batman is not so much modern-day comic book blockbuster as it is a grim detective noir story, centering around a puzzling series of gruesome murders, perpetrated by a twisted and cerebral villain. The result is a film that shares more DNA with David Fincher’s Se7en (Reeves even borrows that film’s perpetually raining aesthetic to great atmospheric effect) than any past high-flying Batman cinematic offerings, and it works ridiculously well.

Ironically, while this is the fully realized Batman fans like myself have been waiting to see on-screen for decades, it also isn’t a Batman as fully realized as some may be used to. When we meet Pattinson’s young Bruce Wayne, he is only two years into his vigilante calling as Batman. When out doing his thing, he strides into scenes surrounded by enemies with a confidence born of righteous anger, his every inevitable bone-crunching punch filled with “VENGEANCE!”. But this is also a young Batman who shows fear and trepidation when he has to throw his body on the line in the type of borderline insane stunts that will one day become pedestrian… and then does it anyway. It’s a subtle bit of acting that goes a long way and Pattinson sells it all right through that rubber mask.

He has to sell this vision of Batman though, because Bruce Wayne doesn’t really exist to a certain degree. And that’s intentional. Unlike past iterations that saw him as a jet-setting wealthy playboy who ran his family’s business empire by day and fought criminals by night dressed as a flying rodent, Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is a reclusive billionaire heir, rarely engaging in public life to the point of social awkwardness. He is broken and bitter, barely sharing a relationship with long-standing family butler Alfred (Andy Serkis) despite his affection for the fatherly figure.

In his slavering dedication to cleaning up the crime-infested Gotham City as a means to live up to the memory of his murdered philanthropic parents, he is Batman whether in his high-tech batsuit or not, personal and public relations be damned (which also means no weird questions about how Bruce Wayne can somehow do all the things he does in a 24-hr cycle and still find time to sleep and be a handsome man-about-town).

These ascetic efforts have effectively transformed Batman into the city’s boogeyman, eliciting fear from every dark corner. Criminals (and civilians) are afraid of him, and the police force, with the exception of GCPD Lieutenant Jim Gordon (the always dependable Geoffrey Wright putting in the work as Batman’s more law-abiding partner), doesn’t trust him and considers him a “freak”. He is reluctantly brought out of the shadows by Gordon though when the Gotham mayor is viciously murdered, with a cryptic message directly addressed to Batman left at the scene of the crime.

The perpetrator, as Batman and Gordon will soon come to know, is The Riddler. But this is not Frank Gorshin’s bowler hat-wearing thief or Jim Carrey’s cackling idiot-savant. Played brilliantly by Paul Dano to unsettling effect, Reeves’ vision of The Riddler is a gimp mask-wearing nightmare of unhinged speeches and horrifying intellect, stringing everyone along in a twisted cat-and-mouse game as he begins murdering his way through a list of prominent Gotham individuals.

Batman’s investigation into these killings also brings him into the orbit of hermetic criminal kingpin Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and his boisterous righthand-man Oswald Cobblepot aka The Penguin (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell chewing the scenery underneath some of the best movie prosthetic work I’ve ever seen). More importantly, he also comes cowl-to-claw with Selena Kyle (Zoe Kravitz), a mysterious cat burglar working her own angle who has a personal tie to the mayor’s murder. Sparks fly almost immediately between the gravelly Bat and the slinky Cat as Pattinson and Kravitz stoke the chemistry in every scene. Well, mostly Kravitz turning up the heat to delicious effect opposite Pattinson’s socially-out-of-his-depth Batman.

What he lacks in personable decorum he makes up for in pure badassery though. The aforementioned gadgets are inspired in their applications and the punching is superbly choreographed and brilliantly shot (Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraser play with lighting and composition to gawk-worthy effect). Pattinson is thrown into several brutal fist-fights against thugs wielding everything from knives to automatic rifles leaving him realistically battered. And yes, these perps do actually shoot him – or at least his high-tech Kevlar armoured suit – instead of just running right up to him with their pistols drawn to be easily disarmed (a past Batman movie pet peeve of mine).

Special mention also has to be made of the new Batmobile, a growling, jet-engined V8 beast that gets a movie-monster-like introduction, all devilish sound design and use of shadows, that gave my goosebumps goosebumps. And when unleashed in a roaring extended mid-film chase sequence, engineered by Reeves with multiple moving parts and deft camera work to scream “CINEMA!”, it instantly becomes a movie icon.

Is The Batman itself as iconic a film though? Well, that leads us to addressing the elephant in the room for this franchise.

Often hailed as arguably the best comic book film of all time, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight will always be the yardstick against which all other Batman movies will be measured. Running leaner (The Batman is a bladder-bursting 177 minutes long that could have used a smidge tightening up), with a more beloved villain in Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn as the Joker (though I’m expecting Riddler cosplays to boom soon), themes and moral ponderings that more easily evoke fanboy fervor and academic dissection, and more mainstream appeal, I would say that The Dark Knight is a better made movie.

But here’s the rub: I’ve never felt The Dark Knight to be that great a Batman movie. Nolan leaned so far into making his version of Batman gritty and realistic, that if you remove the costumes and makeup, you just have a crime thriller. A masterpiece of filmmaking, but still just a crime thriller that could have been set in New York.

With The Batman, Reeves does a far finer balancing act, giving his characters a grounded realism while still taking heavy inspiration from the comic book source material. Gotham City is a blend of baroque gothic and modern architecture that evokes the classic Batman: The Animated Series. Riddler and Falcone’s plots pull from the beloved runs of Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, Tom King, Clay Mann, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, and more comic book creators. And by the end of the film, Reeves has created a breathing, lived-in world, where you know other characters and stories are just pass the next detritus-strewn alleyway (and with two planned HBO Max spinoff series and the Batgirl movie, all standing separate from the mainline DCEU, we know Warner Bros. feels the same way).

What’s more, it leaves Pattinson’s superhero in a very comic book place where this story is ended, but you can’t wait to see his next adventure. An adventure that will see a Batman – and a Gotham city – that has already gone through some significant development. Combine all of that with Michael Giacchino’s pitch-perfect musical score, elevating both action and character beats to operatic heights, and I feel that while Nolan’s magnum opus is technically a better film featuring Batman, what Reeves and co have given us here is the best damn Batman movie ever made.


The Batman review

The Bat is back! Writer/director Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson give us a grungy and grim, detective noir take on the Dark Knight that offers fantastic characterization, nightmarish villains, inspired comic book storytelling, and explosive cinematic action highs, making what is arguably the best Batman film ever.

 9
The Batman was reviewed on IMAX