Starring Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Jayme Lawson

(Good Film)

A new decade. A new Batman. Robert Pattinson, picking up the mantle cast aside by Ben Affleck, plays the character with relentless solemnity. Over the years, it seems whenever a new incarnation of the character hits big screens, the focus has been to make it darker each time. That trend continues here. Tracking a masked maniac known as the Riddler (Dano) who’s killing off corrupt officials, Batman teams with Selina Kyle (Kravitz) and James Gordon (Wright) to unravel the plot. Involved somehow are the powerful underworld figures of Carmine Falcone (Turturro) and rising gangster, Oswald Cobblepot (Farrell). The Batman is a gorgeous piece of filmmaking. Its atmosphere, visuals, and mood are first-rate and make any problems I have with, what should be, key components of the film (acting, story-telling) seem like mere quibbles. This is a mood piece, a comic strip passed through a grunge factory, a visual tour-de-force and the performances that work for me-the majority of the cast-blend right in with ambience of the film as a whole. I, however, was not impressed with Paul Dano’s ostentatious performance as The Riddler, seeing it as too broad and unsurprising. The Batman loses something because of it. Happily, the rest of the cast fill their roles nicely, and the movie is triumph of visual story-telling.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

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