“Two years of nights have turned me into a nocturnal animal,” says Robert Pattinson’s Batman to the audience. Gotham City’s streets are slippery from rain and sleet, making protecting them a tiresome task. He puts on a hoodie and returns to the Batcave where he dusts off his journal and writes out his problems.
And that’s only the introduction. Don’t worry; Matt Reeves’ three-hour adaptation of the DC Comics superhero isn’t lacking in brooding. Batman movies are often either silly or serious; this one falls into the latter category and is a neo-noir with a focus on rats, moles, and the mob. The incumbent is brutally assassinated just before the mayoral elections by a powerful incel who posts videos of his atrocities on social media. Police lieLieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) asks the city’s unofficial guardian angel for assistance after this killer leaves Batman a puzzling message that needs to be solved. It functions admirably as a single police procedural, but as a revival of a larger brand, it falls short.
Batman first reminds me of a serial killer thriller like Saw, which is intriguing. For a while, it held out hope of an unveiling with a satisfactory narrative resolution by promising a mystery storyline connected to the essential issue of municipal corruption in the Batman franchise. But, not really. It has amazing set pieces, stunning visuals, and hits that judder and shudders your sternum as they come at you from the shadows. Jeffrey Wright and John Turturro both provide understatedly strong performances, and charisma is Zo Kravitz’s superpower. Yet, the movie drags on for much too long; the Riddler’s riddles aren’t very clever or even crucial to the plot; and there’s a pretty pathetic non-ending that meekly avoids Batman’s existential crisis.
The political elite in Gotham City is arrogantly congratulating themselves on capturing Sal Maroni, a significant drug dealer. But despite this, the city is still plagued by crime and drug addiction to a brand-new substance called “drops,” which the police force is blatantly ignoring. The Riddler (Paul Dano), who frequently uses social media, is the one who is most concerned about this. He begins to assassinate corrupt members of the Gotham government one at a time, notably Mayor Don Mitchell (Rupert Penry-Jones) and district attorney Gil Colson (Peter Sarsgaard), by leaving nitpicking inquiries for the Batman on Hallmark-style cards at the scene of each heinous crime.
So, in order to defeat the Riddler, our antihero effectively teams up with commissioner Gordon (Wright, who plays the part with an innate sense of dignity and integrity), going up against gang leader Carmine Falcone (Turturro) and his hulking sidekick Oswald “The Penguin” Cobblepot (Colin Farrell), who don’t like questions being raised about who is doing the corrupting.
But hold on. The Wayne family’s wealth and Bruce’s late father, who established fraud and crime as the city’s cornerstone, are the most grotesquely corrupt aspects of Gotham City, in the Riddler’s opinion. The Riddler is intent on killing Bruce Wayne. The Batman is starting to wonder if the Riddler might be onto something.
However, the conclusion is tedious and excessive shark-jumping, with fake apocalyptic scenarios that work better in less serious superhero adventures and an irksome non-revelation whose relevance is hinted at in the next movie. Night inevitably descends on the most recent Batman installment with the murky impression that, of course, nothing has actually been at stake. Yet, Pattinson made a stylish performance as the vigilante with a broken heart.
The Batman was released in the US and Britain on March 4.
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Writer:
Risalat Rahman Hridoy
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE