The Batman

The Caped Crusader is back on Gotham City’s crime-infested streets, exposing corruption at the highest levels in Matt Reeves’ reboot, also featuring Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano and Colin Farrell. With his Planet of the Apes installments, Matt Reeves demonstrated that big studio franchise movies based on iconic screen properties didn’t have to exclude intelligent, emotionally nuanced storytelling. The same applies to The Batman, a brooding genre piece in which the superhero trappings of cape and cowl, Batmobile and cool gadgetry are folded into the grimy noir textures of an intricately plotted detective story. Led with magnetic intensity and a granite jawline by Robert Pattinson as a Dark Knight with daddy issues, this ambitious reboot is grounded in a contemporary reality where institutional and political distrust breeds unhinged vigilantism.

More balanced in its bleak social realism than 2019’s Joker — it’s shaped by the perspective not of a villain but of a conflicted hero whose arc takes him from being an instrument of vengeance to a crime-fighter who refuses to surrender his hope of making a difference despite the daunting odds — The Batman seems less likely to be dismissed as nihilistic exploitation.

Genres:Action, Crime, Drama

Director:Matt Reeves

Cast:Zoë Kravitz, Robert Pattinson, Barry Keoghan