Director: Matt Reeves
Notable Cast: Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano,
Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell
Fear and a little focused violence. In a line of dialogue in
the third act of The Batman, Paul Dano’s Riddler gives the classic
villain monologue which gives Robert Pattinson’s Batman a bit of credit for his
style of unmasking the corruption of the city. It’s a reference to one of
Batman’s opening voice-over narrations about how he uses the shadows, violence,
and a sense of fear to try and repress the criminal element of a decaying
Gotham. Now, his tactics are being used against him by a serial killer-styled
Riddler, who is subsequently hunting down corrupt individuals from Gotham’s 1%
and leaving riddles to drag Batman into the light.
The Batman is bleak. It’s grim. It’s a film dedicated
to honing in on the dark part of the Dark Knight.
Director and co-writer Matt Reeves never avoids it either.
With his latest piece of the DC Extended Universe of live-action comic book
films, Reeves doubles down on the darkness of the early days of the caped
crusader, giving audiences a new cinematic vision of the long-running hero (or
in this case, very much an anti-hero) and possibly delivering one of the more
intriguing incarnations of him. The Batman is not the easiest film to
digest, particularly with its butt-numbing 3-hour runtime, but it’s one that
encapsulates a Batman that is both inherently a throwback to older versions
while running parallel with the themes and societal fears of a new
generation.