The Batman
Director: Matt Reeves
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Paul Dano, Jeffery Wright, Zoë Kravitz
Score: 4 stars
Nearly a decade after Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy, many people still hold Christian Bale as a standard for live-action Batman. And they are not particularly wrong - Bale's Batman did fit the genius detective part of the character, but for all his genius, he really wasn't much of a brawler. Robert Pattinson's Batman, however, is a bloody, brutal, no-holds-barred brawler who makes bystanders wince at the sheer level of violence he is capable of inflicting.
But behind the violence and the charisma of being a masked vigilante sowing terror in the hearts of Gotham's worst, lies a more vulnerable, naked persona ever facing the threat of being wiped out by the Caped Crusader - Bruce Wayne. And Matt Reeves' The Batman brings out both of them in equal capacity, both the good parts and the bad.
There is a fair point to be made in adapting this particular Batman as someone younger, less experienced - it is just his second year of crusade against Gotham's crime scene, after all. The approach allows for a character study of a billionaire trust fund orphan who spends his nights engaging in reckless violence - this is exhibited through Wayne's Rorschach-esque voice-over, emphasising on using fear as a tool, and through, well, actual violence (you'd think any normal person would die after getting hit in the face by an armored fist dozens of times, but they really build them different in Gotham).
The film does not skimp on the detective bit of Batman, however, as he continuously grapples with the ever-escalating threat of the Riddler, a masked maniac bent on killing high-profile members of Gotham over certain unspecified (for the purposes of the review) crimes committed several years in the past. Now call it genius or madness, but Matt Reeves really manages to weave a Riddler worthy of the comics - unhinged, deranged and exceedingly intelligent, particularly with riddles. His plot unravels in a really slow-burn fashion, lasting nearly three hours in runtime, and is riddled with elements that can, and do throw Batman and his one-man friend Jim Gordon off, making it all the more exciting to watch this crackpot duo crack the case.
Batman's interpersonal connections, particularly with Selena Kyle, have been a hot topic in the comics for years, and though the film does kind of wing their relationship a bit, there is a genuine sense of respect for the characters' joint history as Selena wages a one-woman war to locate a friend and gets tangled with the Bat in the process. Selena doesn't need to lean on anyone's shoulders here and goes through her own formation as a person as she inches ever closer to both her friend and to Batman.
As an overarching plot, The Batman stands on its own merit, much like Joker from a couple of years ago. It doesn't rely on any connection, no matter how minor, to the larger DCEU, and builds on a very specific foundation of showing just how rotten Gotham is, and how self-aware The Batman is about the fact that his crusade might just count for nothing at all. For that alone, the film deserves respect, because none of the previous takes on the character ever touched upon this topic in the same manner Matt Reeves does.