177 min | PG-13 | March 4, 2022 | Warner Bros. Pictures
Bruce Wayne is two years into the job and still angry. A killer called the Riddler starts executing Gotham’s elite and leaving puzzles addressed to the Batman. It is a rain-soaked detective noir that takes the cape seriously and never once apologizes for it.
Bruce Wayne is two years into his war on Gotham. He is not a billionaire playboy with a hobby. He is a recluse who works the night shift as a vigilante and keeps a journal. A serial killer calling himself the Riddler starts executing the city’s powerful and leaving puzzles addressed to the Batman. The film treats its hero as a detective first and a brawler second. What it is really about is the rot underneath a corrupt city and the question of whether vengeance fixes anything or just feeds the cycle.
Robert Pattinson plays Bruce Wayne as a wound that never healed. He barely speaks and treats his own body as disposable. Zoë Kravitz plays Selina Kyle with grief and calculation, working her own angle through the same underworld. Paul Dano plays the Riddler as a whining, self-pitying killer who films his murders for an online audience and mistakes resentment for justice. Colin Farrell disappears under prosthetics as Oz, a mid-level mobster grasping for a throne above his station. Jeffrey Wright grounds the film as Lt. James Gordon, the one honest cop willing to stand beside a man in a mask and do actual police work.
Matt Reeves directs and co-writes with Peter Craig, and they build Gotham as a permanent night drowned in rain. The detective structure gives the film patience. Scenes play long. The camera follows Batman into rooms and lets the dread accumulate before anything happens. Michael Giacchino’s score does heavy lifting, a slow funeral march of low brass that announces the character before he enters the frame. A car chase shot largely from inside the vehicles turns spectacle into something heavy and physical instead of weightless.
The film commits to its mood and earns it. This is a Batman still figuring out what he is for, and the answer the story reaches is not the one he starts with. The detective plot holds together and the Riddler’s scheme lands with real menace. Reeves takes the character literally and refuses to wink, which is rarer than it should be. This is a serious, well-built piece of genre filmmaking. It does not reinvent the form, but it executes it with more conviction than almost anyone bothers to bring.