Film Review :' 'the Batman"

 Matt Reeves has a pretty clear vision of the Batman he wanted to bring to life. This allowed him to cast Robert Pattinson, as the Dark Knight, and focus on the early noir of the detective days. After all DC stand for Detective Comics. Comparisons to movies like "Seven" could be applied. The gimp version of the Riddler even worked. The less you saw of him the better. This is Batman year two so I f not to get too hung up over the first fight scene that saw just common gang members able to take more than one punch from Batman. Early buzz about the movie made claims that this was the best Batman movie ever on one side of the fence and that it was too woke on the other. In 2022 we have allowed a narrative to flourish that a rich white man would be the enemy, so that would be Bruce Wayne how did they handle this?  

The Riddler was a social justice warrior who wanted to bring this into the light. The politics of this film were much like the riddles the villain set up if you look into the layers the joke might be on you. We find that Thomas Wayne, whose relationship with Falcone leans onto the "Long Halloween" storyline. Wayne whose politics must be left leaning considering how much he gives to those in need, something that is even brought up by a political candidate who asks Bruce to follow in his father's footsteps, askes the gangster to have someone taken care of, which would align him more with the Clintons.  So who is the movie covertly mocking? Or is this an even handed message that all power corrupts no matter than hat they are wearing. 

It was when the Riddler's mask comes off that the movie falls apart, It almost recreates the scene with Heather Ledger and Bale in the second Nolan film. In fact this is where the movie loses the focus it started with and tries to hard to be a Nolan film. The climatic final battle, was too formulaic, We find Batman most in peril because he is hanging by one arm. This is a guy who swings around Gotham , climbing on buildings, he has been doing it for two years, do you mean to tell me he can not do a one arm pull up? Not buying it. Leading up to this i dozed off a few times, as the movie was that captivating, but the parts a slept through needed to be edited any way as it did not miss a beat with the storyline, much of the bloat could have been trimmed and this film given more focus. Lots of wasted potential .Pattinson was better than expected but as a physical prescience, even Keaton was better.  I wished the move kept the tone of the first 30 minutes.