The Batman (2022) Review: Pattinson’s brooding Batman shines in gripping noir thriller

★★★★☆

It would be easy to dismiss this latest interpretation of the caped crusader with eyes rolled and a weary sigh. To date, there have been 17 theatrically-released films starring Batman, with 11 different actors taking on the title role- which is the highest number of actors playing a role and film appearances for a superhero, ever. With such a girthy filmography and the groaning weight of superhero fatigue weighing down on it, is The Batman actually worth your time?

The answer is a resounding yes from me. There are aspects of this film that will seem familiar at first glance. The dark, brooding and grounded tone of the Dark Knight can be seen here, as well as the dramatic, gothic flourishes found in Tim Burton’s films. If you’ve seen any of the marketing (and the title of this review), it’s clear that this is more Christian Bale than Adam West. These are surface-level similarities, however. Matt Reeves’ The Batman is definitely its own beast, for better and for worse.

I’d call myself a big fan of Batman personally; there’s a darkness and a greyness to the character that you don’t find in the vast majority of superhero flicks, that lends itself well to telling more grounded and complex stories with interesting themes. What sets this Batman movie apart from the others is the style and genre of film we are seeing, the section of Bruce Wayne’s life we are seeing, combined with the presentation and performance by Robert Pattinson.

Those who’ve been waiting for a true Batman detective story will be waiting no longer; this film plays out like a true noir, exploring a tangled web of mob politics, corruption, murder and cynicism. Pattinson’s Batman and Jeffrey Wright’s Inspector Jim Gordon work closely together for the entirety of the runtime, navigating murky alleyways and tight police station corridors. There’s plenty of white-knuckle action and set-piece moments, but a lot of what you’ll be experiencing here is good old fashioned investigative police work. And for the most part, it’s great.

The elephant in the room here is Robert Pattinson as Batman. Anyone in the know will be aware that this is a very different actor to the one seen in Twilight over a decade ago. If you’ve seen any of his recent films, you’ll know that Pattinson is one of the finest actors working today, with fantastic range and a strange, magnetic charisma. He is excellent, both as Batman and Bruce Wayne. His Batman is younger than many we’ve seen before, a quiet, softly-spoken man fuelled almost entirely by his trauma and his inability to channel it healthily. Pattinson himself commented on the character that:

"He’s got this enormous trauma inside him, and he’s built this intricate, psychological mechanism to handle it…it’s like a really, really, really bad self-therapy, which has ended up with him being Batman at the end"

With this in mind, Pattinson’s Batman could very easily have devolved into a sulky, showy “I’m not like most Batmen; I’m a little bit quirky” territory. But he instead finds a more subtle, youthful balance between rage and melancholy which compliments the overall tone of the film very well.

Batman here is characterised as a vehicle of vengeance, ruthless and vindictive in his crusade against crime. The character has been presented many times before as a symbol of fear, but here you really do get the sense that he is dancing on the line of becoming just like the criminals he hunts down. The film examines the idea of moral greyness in a very cynical manner; almost all of these characters have more bad than good in them, from the goons on the streets to the police officers and politicians in the high-rise apartments. Gotham is in turn presented as a character in itself, a lecherous pit that will never change, bringing out the worst in everyone that has the misfortune of living there. It’s a very dark film is what I’m getting at here.

This idea of darkness is carried through in the filmmaking and the aesthetics. We spend far more time with Batman than with Bruce Wayne and watch as he prowls around the city, spying from the shadows; a physical manifestation of the city itself. Batman’s theme within the musical score is just like the character and the city of Gotham; dark, foreboding and dirty, crafted around a motif from Nirvana’s “Something in the Way”. It perfectly encapsulates the title character’s youthful anger, attitude and apathy; the entire score is excellent in this regard too. The production design fits the bill too; Gotham is a damp, decrepit and dimly lit husk of a city, Wayne Tower is a gothic ruin of a residence, and the encounters with the Riddler take place in set pieces that wouldn’t look out of place in a straight-up horror movie.

Speaking of said set pieces, the film cross-examines Batman and the Riddler; both orphans, both plagued by trauma, and both working through said trauma by bringing justice to those that have wronged them. The only thing really separating them, you could argue, is the Wayne family fortune. A point made by Paul Dano’s Riddler himself. One of the best aspects of the Batman character is the notion that he’s just as psychotic as those in his rogue's gallery; a complete loon running around in a mask, kicking the crap out of other loons in masks. This film serves as one of my favourite explorations and presentations of this idea, even if it could’ve perhaps gone further with it.

Of the supporting cast, the vast majority of them are terrific. Dano is utterly terrifying as the Riddler, a far cry from the Jim Carey iteration. This Riddler is scarily real, an outcast loner and a deranged serial killer with fringe ideals. He makes for an enthralling antagonist. Colin Farrell is also entirely unrecognisable as the Penguin; with better material and more scenes to steal, this performance could well have been worthy of an Oscar in my opinion. Andy Serkis’ Alfred also has a gruff charm and warmth, though is slightly underutilised. My only slight issue is with Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman. Her physical performance as the character is great, but I found some of her dialogue to be unconvincing at best and borderline cringy at worst, and I personally found her story and presence to be a little bit of a distraction at times from the rest of the plot.

To be fair, I would point the finger at the script more so than at Kravitz. If there’s one criticism to be made, it’s that a lot of the dialogue is, at times, incredibly basic, expository and surface-level; there only for function, and to show rather than tell. It is for this reason that I found some of the character relationships that form to be undercooked, slapdash, and a little rushed. Another would be in the ending, which functions more as a disappointing exercise in cinematic-universe setup, a handholding of themes and plain stupid moments which I won’t spoil. It does, unfortunately, get quite silly towards the end, but it by no means ruins the film at all.

It could be argued that Reeves takes a similar level of inspiration from the dark, gritty detective stories of David Fincher, as 2020’s Joker famously took from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. Both films could also be defined as an attempted redemption of sorts for these characters in a post-Justice League world. Batman functions as the lead detective, working with Officer Jim Gordon and the rest of the police in a manner similar to the leads in Fincher classics like Seven or Zodiac. They hunt a serial killer in the Riddler who certainly wouldn’t feel out of place in a movie like Seven. But unlike Joker, The Batman stands more confidently on its own two feet as its own entity. The Batman is well-worth your time, both for fans of the character and of movies in general. It has its fair share of flaws but I would thoroughly recommend you check this one out.