Review of Batman (1989) by Halfwelshman — 27 Feb 2012

Batman is a truly fine superhero film. It's not just that, though - most of the film more closely resembles an action-orientated film noir, and it has a finale that appears to have been taken straight out of a Gothic horror movie.

Michael Keaton is the best film Batman, no question. While I can understand his casting raised a few eyebrows, but his portrayal of Bruce Wayne is very human and sincere, and very likeable, and his portrayal of the Dark Knight is unexpectedly effective, and highly influential (Christian Bale wasn't the first to adopt a different voice for the bat and the man).

His successors never reach the heights Keaton does, with Val Kilmer being too camp and George Clooney being completely lifeless. Jack Nicholson's Joker makes for an extremely entertaining, scary villain.

While he will now always be compared to Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning performance, you can't avoid the fact that they're very different roles. Ledger's Joker is uncontrollable and without any clear aim - he's a rabid dog.

Nicholson's Joker is a sociopathic gangster with fame on his mind, is far more calculated and aware of what he is doing, and I personally find that far more scary. Like I say, they're different interpretations of the character, and impossible to rank one above the other.

Kim Basinger's Vicki Vale makes a good damsel in distress, Michael Gough makes the perfect Alfred, and Jack Palance growls through his lines as another despicable villain, crime boss Carl Grissom. It's such a shame that Billy Dee Williams never got to play Two-Face (as he really wanted to) with his version of Harvey Dent being such an intriguing, ambiguous, image-obsessed character - he would have made a really memorable villain.

Like all of Tim Burton's films, Batman is a visual feast, with Gotham city presented as a murky, industrial, crime-ridden dystopian metropolis, but with a striking ahistorical mix of architecture by designer Anton Furst.

Appropriately enough for a film which is so influenced by Brazil in its design, the cinematographer is regular Terry Gilliam collaborator Roger Pratt, and his steady, measured filming style marries very well with Burton's dark, focused vision.

As well as being a very engaging and well constructed superhero film and crime thriller, Batman has a surprising amount of comedy in it. This isn't the campy, pun-laden humour of the Schumacher Batman films - these are clever, self-aware jokes about social convention (the scene where Bruce Wayne is having a meal with Vicky Vale across a ridiculously long dining table before Wayne admits that he doesn't think he's ever been in this particular room of his vast mansion before is incredibly funny, helped no small measure by Keaton's impeccable comic timing) and the affectionate mockery of the ridiculousness of the source material (two thugs looking over an apparently unconscious Batman wonder who he is, but rather than immediately thinking to remove his mask, one suggests that they should "check his wallet").

The addition of humour adds a lot to the film, but never at the expense of story or character. Schumacher took this too far in his films, but Burton gets the balance between humour and seriousness just right.

Finally, Danny Elfman's score is among the best of his career, providing a consistent moody and mysterious tone to the film, and creating a memorable hero theme to rival even John Williams' iconic theme for Superman.

Batman is a truly great superhero film. So visually striking, it looks like it was torn straight out of the comic books it was based on, and the two most recognisable characters from those pages are brought wonderfully to life by Keaton and Nicholson.

The film retains the tragedy and darkness of Batman as a character and the world he inhabits, but never gets carried away with it to the extent that the film becomes depressing. The addition of a liberal dose of humour is a welcome one, and it's nice to see a decent big budget superhero film confident enough to incorporate comedy into its story (something we have seen more of recently, with Iron Man and Thor).

A great superhero film, a nice call-back to film noir and Gothic horror of classic Hollywood, and one of Mr Burton's very best - Batman really is rather fantastic.