"The Batman" (2022) Review
This is a comic book movie.
I think it might be easy to look at the aesthetic of The Batman in still photos, or even in motion during a trailer, and think that the film might be attempting some kind of realism. Plainly put, it’s not. While the aesthetic of this film is deeply textured and carefully constructed in shades of shadows and dim lights, it only wears that aesthetic to make a living comic book world. Gotham is ultimately as pulpy as its ever been, same with its villains and heroes. The shots and frames feel as if they were ripped from a graphic novel, you can imagine some of the wide shots as two-page splashes, adorned with voice-over captions and inserts of specific characters in the scene.
The Batman might wear its texture as if it’s a worn and real world, but this is also a film in which Colin Farrell, under some of the best prosthetics I’ve ever seen, plays an Italian gangster version of The Penguin who mocks Batman to his face about his understanding of the Spanish language.
It feels important to establish this basic fact upfront, because I think there’s some portion of people who will see this movie at a glance and think it’s trying to be some “elevated” version of a superhero movie. Instead, it’s thoroughly a story about a hero finding his true self across a tableau of concrete and steel buildings adorned by gargoyles while tracking a live streaming serial killer. The movie certainly broods and descends into dark places, but it fundamentally embraces its pulpier origins throughout.
This balance between a sense of pulpy reality, serious and gonzo all at once, is the trademark of the film’s writer and director, Matt Reeves. The architect of the latter half of the modern Planet of the Apes trilogy (specifically Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War For the Planet of the Apes), Reeves's specialty seems to be bringing improbably absurd ideas into a reality in which they can be taken seriously, all while indulging in their wilder tendencies. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, for instance, is a movie that has room for a deeply moving story of communities attempting to coexist with one another despite their pasts and room for a chimpanzee dual-wielding assault rifles while riding a horse that’s jumping through flames.
The Batman nails this balance, telling a smartly structured story that seems to act as a refutation to pop culture’s perception of Batman as being nothing but a roving badass who smashes goons in the night. Batman certainly does do that, but he has to be more than that, and this idea at the core of The Batman is what makes it one of the finest films to ever star the character.
In this incarnation, Batman has not existed for very long. Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) is only two years into his crusade, and it’s one he’s not entirely sure is even a good idea. He’s really only managed to build up two friends to help out, and one of them is his lifelong servant Alfred (Andy Serkis). His only other real ally is Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), and there’s no one else in the entire Gotham City Police Department that has his back.
However, Batman is quickly pulled into a massive crime scene when the long-sitting mayor of Gotham City is found dead in his apartment along with a letter adressed to “The Batman.” As other victims and strange clues begin to appear, Batman is forced into a cat and mouse game with a serial killer calling himself The Riddler (Paul Dano), intent on dismantling the power structures of Gotham one body at a time. As Batman’s investigation takes him deeper into the criminal and political underworld of Gotham, he’s forced to cross paths with mobsters, corrupt cops, and an unusual ally in the form of thief Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) as they all find themselves caught in The Riddler’s machinations.
More than any Batman movie ever made, this is Batman’s movie. There are a handful of scenes in which Batman is not directly present, and almost all of those scenes belong to The Riddler. This is a film that wants to depict in no uncertain terms the process and misery of being Batman, and how isolating his existence is, especially in the early days of his career. His relationship with Alfred is strained throughout the movie, he has no time to be Bruce Wayne for even his private matters, let alone public appearances. If you’re coming to this film hoping to see Bruce Wayne pretending to be a playboy and faking his persona, you can leave that hope at the door.
It almost goes without saying that Robert Pattinson does a great job playing this deeply wounded version of the character. We are no longer at the point in which anyone has to justify Pattinson’s abilities as an actor, we’re a decade after the last Twilight film and it’s been clear in the intervening years that he’s one of the most talented actors of his generation, his performances in Good Time and The Lighthouse being landmarks. The Batman isn’t quite a landmark performance, but it’s damn good regardless, and it’s Pattinson’s uncanny ability to work off of the other performers in the cast that really makes him shine.
Which neatly brings me to the relationship between Batman and Selina Kyle, AKA Catwoman. While the script seems a bit light in terms of justifying chemistry between the two, Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz’s actual chemistry more than picks up the slack. I loved every single scene between them, and Kravitz is one of the best live-action versions of Catwoman to date. I seriously hope that someone gets Catwoman her own movie at some point down the line, because Kravitz has everything the character needs to leap to life onscreen. It’s not just in scenes with Pattinson that she’s great, she carries multiple scenes as well as anyone in the cast.
Another joy to be found in this movie’s character relationships is between Batman and Gordon. Jeffrey Wright is a personal favorite performer of mine, but I think just about anyone is going to love his version of the character. He’s as genuinely concerned and humane as ever, but he manages to be the source of some of the film’s best comedy, and not in a one-liner kind of way. His working relationship with Batman is inherently absurd and in a precarious position because of the rest of his fellow police officers, and the movie finds some hilarious gags as a result.
To round out the ally characters, Andy Serkis does a lot with a little as Alfred. He’s unfortunately not in the movie as much as I hoped he’d be, but it cannot be overstated how much he does with minimal screentime. He’s playing a very particular version of this character and seems to express anxieties and fears that other versions haven’t capitalized on as much.
Now, that’s all well and good, but Batman movies, even one as focused on the title character as this one, live or die by the villains. Thankfully, they’re all as up to the task as everyone else.
Paul Dano’s incarnation of The Riddler is a deranged and bizarre performance, and I mean that in a good way. He bloviates and lords over his victims in cell phone footage while seeming to channel John Doe from Se7en, but there are some surprising elements of his character to be found that are only bolstered by Dano’s innate ability to play punchable creeps.
My only problem with his performance is that it’s overshadowed by the mobster villain performances in this film, a one-two punch between The Penguin (Colin Farrell) and Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).
I can’t say enough good things about Colin Farrell as The Penguin. Of all of the characters in this movie, even more than The Riddler, Batman, or even Catwoman, The Penguin feels the most like he leaped out of a comic book in terms of his performance. It borders on over-the-top, but it never overreaches. The performance is aided by some of the most stunning make-up prosthetics I’ve seen in a modern film. He’s unrecognizable beyond his eyes, and the rest of his face doesn’t look like a pile of latex around those eyes. On one hand, they could have cast someone who actually looks more like The Penguin, but when the make-up is this good and it’s backed up by this kind of performance, I’m willing to let that slide.
The mobster who walks away with a significant portion of the film though is undoubtedly John Turturro as Carmine Falcone. This character hasn’t appeared too many times onscreen (to my knowledge, he’s only been played in live-action by Tom Wilkinson in Batman Begins before this and by others in animation), and with all due respect to past performers, this is the best version of the character to date. John Turturro is so unnervingly calm, including for a truly horrifying sequence that’s never actually seen but only heard. He doesn’t miss a beat in the story, and the way the script puts him at odds with our heroes leads to really interesting scenes.
The film relies on a wide cast to move through these dialogue sequences, but The Batman doesn’t forget the action. There might be significant amounts of time between the action, but the action is excellently constructed, usually in long wide shots and anchored camerawork (a trademark of Reeves’ style). A car chase involving the Batmobile in particular really shines, but that’ll happen when you homage To Live and Die in L.A. (I didn’t just shoehorn in that reference because I’ve reviewed that film, it really homages To Live and Die in L.A.).
The actual fisticuffs feel heavy and brutal, especially because, unlike some previous Batman films, Batman actually takes some rough hits throughout the fights. As often as he’s dispatching a crowd of goons, he still manages to get beaten into corners that he’s forced to bash his way out of. Combined with camera angles that make Batman seem roughly a foot taller than everyone in a scene, you have some of the most satisfying and tension-filled fights to ever feature the Caped Crusader.
The cinematography by Greig Fraser used to capture all of this is gorgeous, though it uses a shallow depth of field a whole hell of a lot. It works for most of the scenes in which it’s employed, but there does come a point where you can’t help but wonder how many of the shots are actually in focus sometimes. The overwhelming sense of texture and place captured by the cinematography always wins out in the end though, and the stark contrasts between light and shadow lead to some of the best shots this character has ever been featured in.
The musical score, composed by the always dependable Michael Giacchino, is… Good. It doesn’t feel as remarkable as some past Batman scores, but it always works in the scenes in context. There are really only a few scenes where the score really feels stand-out to me, otherwise, it just sort of fades into the background for me. It’s not bad, but some more distinct compositions can’t help but feel like a bit of a missed opportunity.
The film’s biggest problem though is undeniably the pacing of its third act. Personally, I don’t mind that The Batman clocks in at 2 hours and 56 minutes. I think the film begins strong and keeps a great pace throughout the second act, but the third definitely goes long. The story has a lot of threads and moving pieces to wrap up, and you can’t help but feel the faintest bit of “the ending of Return of the King” syndrome. The first time I saw this film, after one of the film’s best sequences of writing and visual storytelling showing growth and change, positive and negative, across the city and its inhabitants, backed by the best score in the movie, I seriously thought the movie was going to cut to black. Instead, two major scenes followed in rapid succession.
On the plus side though, the final sequence they decide to end on is great too, but I will say the scene that precedes it is a mixed bag. You may already know what it is, and rest assured, even from someone like me who loves most of this movie, it feels tacked on. Even with the caliber of actors involved, you can’t help but wonder if it’s a scene that couldn’t have been moved to the end of the credits or cut entirely.
In case it’s not clear, these really are the only things about The Batman that actively bother me. There’s a very specific vibe of melancholy, rage, and pulp that this movie is operating under, and it just so happens that I love that vibe. I love that this movie has more in common with corrupt cop films of the 1970s or “New York is a hellhole” films of the same timeframe than any other genre, all while playing in the aesthetic of serial killer thrillers like Se7en. I love that this film picks a relatively simple character arc and explores it as much as it can before landing on a hopeful message after a hellish descent. It lets you sit in the mind of Batman in a way that I feel this film handles better than any other incarnation.
(However, before I close this out, I want to make one thing clear: My favorite Batman movie is still The Dark Knight. It’s going to be a long time before anyone tops that one. The Batman is a valiant attempt, but it didn’t win out.)
The Batman is one of the best movies to ever feature its title character. While there are some minor stumbles in some places where it does matter, the whole vastly outweighs those elements, all while bringing a fantastic cast into the fold. I’m really looking forward to visiting this version of Gotham in the future, and this film only helps to cement Matt Reeves as a franchise filmmaker to keep a close eye on.
