This is a weird reboot. It feels very much prompted by the wild financial and critical success of Todd Philip’s JOKER, a film which I liked but also left me feeling a bit dirty after watching it. Matt Reeves, a capable director who’s made several films I loved has taken an iconic DC superhero and put him into the darkest, dirtiest and most detective-iest version of the Dark Knight we’ve seen on screen to date. For once, the Batman of this tale lives up to his comic-book tagline of “the world’s greatest detective” although here he’s more akin to Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt’s characters in David Fincher’s SE7EN.
Reeves has created a strange hybrid movie that’s largely a bleakly-told tale of the hunt for a serial killer in a corrupt, lawless city, perpetually shrouded in a haze of rain and mist. Then occasionally, it remembers it features a superhero in the lead role and we get some brief, but dazzlingly orchestrated, action scenes. It’s nearly three hours long and I did start to feel quite drained towards the end. There’s only so much gloom and darkness I can take, and the Gotham City of this telling is not a place you really want to spend that much time in. It’s a film that is thick with atmosphere but lacking much of the basic sense of fun that characterised earlier takes on the character. But it all looks gorgeous, in a grizzly rain-smeared way. The use of dirty opticals amps up the atmosphere and no shot is ever in danger of looking clean.
The casting is decent-to-great. Robert Pattinson looks good in the batsuit and certainly can glower and growl with the best of them. But he spends very little time out of the suit as Bruce Wayne, which lumps the film with a protagonist who often seems barely human and lacking a bit on the relatability scale. Zoe Kravitz was a fabulous Selina Kyle/Catwoman, bringing a heady mix of sensuality, physicality and vulnerability to the role. Colin Farrell is barely recognisable as Penguin, but manages to project a compelling performance from behind some extraordinarily well crafted prosthetic work. Jeffrey Wright is a fine commissioner Gordon, but I’d listen to Jeffrey Wright reading a telephone directory – he’s got a voice like rich corinthian leather. But the casting that shone the brightest – at least in my eyes – was Paul Dano as The Riddler. An inspired piece of casting, he veers between creepily affable and a psychotically murderous mad genius. I’ve seen Paul Dano play some very strange and troubled individuals in films before, but never taken to quite this level before. There’s something genuinely disturbing to his performance, a disquieting sense of anger-fuelled mental illness echoing Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-winning performance in JOKER.
So, was it good? Yeah, it’s good. Did I enjoy it as much as the Nolan Batflicks? Probably not. But it’s worth seeing if you’re a fan of DC and grimdark crime movies. I suspect it’s one of those films that will come back to haunt my dreams. An interesting direction for a much-rebooted series.
