Review: The Batman

PRO: The Batman is a great action movie. Not that there’s a lot of action in it—the story’s a little too mopey for that—but there are a couple of sequences that tear things up in classic fashion. One of them, a car chase for the ages, has Batman (Robert Pattinson) roaring along in his Batmobile (not yet so-called) in furious pursuit of the cackling maniac known as the Penguin (Colin Farrell). They’re screeching down a highway through a choking pall of smoke and flame, knocking big 16-wheel trucks out of their way, when suddenly, Batman—okay, the Batman—disappears from sight in the fiery maelstrom. For a moment it looks like he’s out of the game. But then, in Penguin’s rearview, we see the Bat car soaring up out of the roaring inferno behind him and landing with a crunch back on the road. The chase continues, awesomely.

The movie’s other great action moment is set in a Gotham subway station. It’s Halloween, and a gang of mooks with neo-Joker, Day of the Dead-style face paint are menacing a blameless Asian guy. Out of the shadows, the Batman appears. To fully appreciate the havoc that ensues you must know that the movie is constricted by a PG-13 rating, so director Matt Reeves knew he had to keep the blood and the bone-break muted. Which is why a lot of the damage done in this picture is a matter of careful presentation and artful audio. We see one of the mooks rush forth to attack Batman and we sort of see Batman twist one of his arms into an unnatural position and we hear some kind of cracking sound—and that’s it. Likewise, as we watch Bat