Review of The Batman (2022) by Thisguy1 — 08 Mar 2022

Solid film. It's similarly grounded like Nolan's Batman movies but much darker, grittier, and more brutal. As a big fan of Batman graphic novels, this film felt more like a Batman film than any Batman movie that came before it (not saying it's the best Batman film). The Batman's character arc was a highlight of the movie for me. There were several moments in the first two-thirds of the film where I remember thinking "this is just retreading ideas that I recall from Nolan's The Dark Knight," but the ending actually expanded on these ideas in a really refreshing way that I'm surprised Nolan didn't think of himself. I'm very excited for the inevitable sequel.

A controversial take, but not a negative critique is that the cast was simply good. Not great. Looking back what previous actors brought to the table, I don't think this cast did anything special. Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeifer, Danny Devito, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, and Tom Hardy were truly memorable and awe inspiring in their total embodiment of their characters. Although this could change over the course of the sequels, I think that most of the cast of this film don't achieve similar heights. They are good, but not great. Pattison really didn't have much to do other than walk, coldly deliver lines, grunt, and fight, but he did it all well. Wright as Gordon didn't really bring anything new to the table in my opinion, but again his performance was solid. Serkis as Alfred was completely forgettable and hopefully they give him more to do in the sequels. Dano, Ferrel, and Kravitz were just short of great. Dano spent most of the movie behind a mask and I often felt like his sporadic emotional fluctuations when delivering his lines were less frightening and more distracting - reminding me of every other actor whose portrayed the unhinged psychopath this way, pulling me away from the movie. Ferrel's Penguin has me thinking The Batman is an earlier frontrunner for Best Makeup, but his character was nothing more than a club owning mobster. Between the makeup and his performance, it could have been "great" if he'd have been given more to do. The best part about Kravitz was the story and fight choreography. But her actual performance felt like a retread of what's already been done and I didn't really feel any actual chemistry between her and Batman, so their intimate moments felt a bit forced. Again, definitely not bad and her character's story combined with Arkham style fight choreography elevated her performance above "good" but just short of "great." The only character that I thought was "great" is someone I haven't really seen anyone talk about... John Turturro's Carmine Falcone. Even with only a short amount of screen time, he stole most scenes he was in. His delivery was subtle, yet intimidating. He never took off his sunglasses, but you could feel his eyes penetrating each character he gazed at. I don't think he's getting nearly enough credit for his role in the film.

The only valid negative is that this movie was too long. On that note, I don't know what I'd cut from it cause it really didn't have any filler. I would love to see a director's cut that potentially cut the movie into 3-4 separate chapters/episodes like Tarantino's Hateful Eight.