Man of Steel

Written at the time of the film's release.

Zod It
or
The Never-Ending Battle (No, Really. The Never-Ending Battle)

Marvel Comics' film division has so saturated the movie market that its Direct Competition, DC Comics looks like a 98-pound weakling by comparison. Oh, they did well with Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" Batman series (very well), but the Warners film version of Green Lantern was a little dim. So, if they put out any more product, they'd better do it right, or be seen as also-ran's. And the one they HAVE to nail is the DC super-star and cornerstone, Superman. The Last Son of Krypton debuted in comics in 1938, has been on-screen since the Fleischer cartoon days of 1942, a radio series since 1940, on television since 1952, and the big screen since 1980 (ushering the current glut of superhero movies). Superman has had several iterations since, especially on television, starting with George Reeves, then "Lois and Clark," then "Smallville." Much tribute has been paid the last few years to the movie version starring Chris Reeve—he even appeared on "Smallville" a few times before his death—and Bryan Singer's attempted re-boot, Superman Returns, was a slavish recreation with better technology, that, in retrospect, was so slavish, it was a little creepy.

The rumor is Warner Brothers HAD to make a Superman movie or pay out a healthy sum to the family of Jerry Siegel, the characters' co-creator, and coincidentally, David Goyer gave Christopher Nolan a great idea for how to handle Superman while they were making The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan wants to direct other things besides super-heroes, so he brought in Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) to do the film, and in some ways its a good choice. Snyder knows how to bring comic books to the big screen, transposing the static images to a hyper-dramatic movement, even if he sometimes misses the point of what those stories are saying. The trick was making a GOOD Superman movie—even the Reeve ones corroded after a few years—out of an essentially "old-fashioned" character that is powerful enough that it is a challenge to come up with worthy opponents (on a budget, that is). What can you do with Superman that hasn't already been done? How do you present it/him? Is he Moses or Hercules? Christ or Pro-Wrestler? There have been lots of interpretations over the last 75 years, and Nolan-Goyer-Snyder have snatched quite a few of them to their purposes.

Lets talk about what's good about Man of Steel: they're no slavish interpretations: on Krypton, there are no gleaming towers, head-bands, or crystal palaces, but instead an interesting steel-chrome re-imagining, with no plastic in sight (even their view-screens are pointilated metal images), with no clean architectural lines but re-engineered as if by Frank Geary. Superman's suit is more rococo than Ringling Brothers. 

Casting is uniformly excellent: yes, Laurence Fishburne makes a great Perry White; Amy Adams a spunky, no-nonsense (for once) Lois Lane; and Henry Cavill is empathetic as the many identities of alien Kal-El, preternaturally handsome, almost beautiful, and alarmingly ripped, he never winks, acts cute, and plays it straight and un-ironically, with maybe a little too much furrow in his brow. Russell Crowe's Jor-El is a bit more of an action-figure this time, which seems unnecessary, and Ayelet Zurer has much more to do as Lara than just cry and fret. Kal-el's Earth foster parents, the Kents, are marvelous, both Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, but especially Costner, whose Jonathan Kent is a moral force to be reckoned with, fully aware that his son is not only a special-needs child, but a sociological game-changer, the answer to "we're not alone in the Universe" and all the potential for panic and fear that his very existence might produce. Costner's been waiting in the wings doing good, unsentimental character work in smaller movies, shucking his ego, for many years for the opportunity to do something this good and remind people that, yeah, he's a good, clever, disciplined actor capable of great things.

One of the best things about Man of Steel is its cast, 
including Kevin Costner as Superman's Earth Dad.

The other thing that gave me great hope for Man of Steel was its re-interpretation of the whole "growing up super" problem. Kal-El/Clark Kent grows up with a gradually increasing set of powers—in class one day, he freaks out because he can see the skeletons of all his classmates, a cacophony of sounds from miles around threaten to split his skull, he runs to isolate himself in (as by media tradition) a broom-closet, and when the teacher threatens to open the door, he zaps it with heat-vision. He can't tell people what's going on—Dad's orders—but he has to learn to deal with being different and suppress it, even to the disservice of others. It's the "gift or curse" dilemma, which has been touched on before in the mythos, but never to this extent. 

And the other nifty thing is that more than any other "Super"-movie, this one is more science-fiction oriented, it's an alien invasion movie that "Superman" just happens to star in, and be the chief target for. And there is a concerted effort to make this "THE moment" when Clark becomes Superman. Here, Kent's been going from one job to another for years, hiding from society, and when Super-Opportunity rears its ugly head, he moves on, lest he be found out (it's also the impetus to introduce Lois Lane, who happens to stumble on this urban legend of a "mysterious stranger" and, reporter that she is, tracks him down). But, that "alien threat" text is a great way to keep Superman under wraps,* dealing with the anonymity, and bringing Lane into it. There's great potential there, as the one person who exposes to the people of Earth that there are "aliens among us," is the picture's chief villain, Krypton's General Zod.

And this is where the movie gets into trouble.  Not that Zod isn't a great character. Genetically-engineered—the Kryptonian way—to be a soldier, he stages a coup in the last days of Krypton in a misguided attempt to keep Krypton "pure." He finds the naturally-birthed Kal-El repellent, Jor-el a traitor, and is single-mindedly determined to return Krypton to its proper way. And as spewed by Michael Shannon (who's terrific here, but then he's always terrific), he is a seriously deranged megalomaniac. And although his plans are simple, his means of doing them are so complex,** they tend to bog the movie down, leading to the worst problem with the film—it's ultimately dull and tedious.

We all remember Superman II—with Terence Stamp as General Zod—and the extended fight between Christopher Reeves' Superman and the three Kryptonian criminals which, while good for its time, seemed to be merely a bunch of fighting Cirque De Soleil wire-work. This time, it's the way it's imagined in the comics, super-fast, punching, punching, punching, the combatants sending each other crashing through buildings and skidding across pavement to screw themselves up and go at each other again...over and over and over again.

Comics-geeks (including me) have always wanted to see this, it's a dream-nightmare come true, but like Hitchcock's retort to why his characters never go to the police ("because it's bo-oring" and then proved it in Psycho), it's too much of the same thing, no matter how much collateral damage is being inflicted, it becomes as dull as a "Transformers" movie—one shouldn't be looking "up in the sky" by rolling their eyes. 

Someone once expressed a dissatisfaction with "super-hero" movies because Hollywood has turned them from adventure stories to war stories, and the ante is being upped to the point of unsustainability and sameness. It's the familiar (in recent story-challenged movies) city-calving carnage, but just in different costumes, and if film-makers are going to keep trying to tap this dry well, they need to come up with unique stories besides battles royale, ones suited to the particular characters (and not particularly the villains').

And that's where Man of Steel ultimately fails—the screenwriters let the character down. What sets Superman apart is he IS so pure, his intentions are the best, he's "the big blue boy scout," with a moral compass that's been set on both Krypton and Earth, the best of both worlds. Here, Superman makes choices for his adopted home-world that should scare the bejesus out of its citizens, and they're made about twenty minutes of destruction (and how many unseen lives) too late. Forget the considerable property damage sustained—whole city blocks are turned to scrap, buildings collapse, with I'm sure lots of people crushed in the rubble—his ultimate action and the timing of it, is just not what The Man of Tomorrow represents in any of its incarnations. The filmmakers negate what makes the character of Superman so special in that one act, making the character just another guy with too much power in a suit, and not a very good guy at that.*** 

Lots of good things here, but lots of bad things as well, and I argued back and forth with myself over what to rate this, but just because of the tedium factor I chose what I chose, so one could fast-forward—like a speeding bullet—through the never-ending battles.

Direct dialogue grab from Grant Morrison's (and Frank Quitely's) "All-Star Superman"

* The TV-series "Smallville" did a similar thing, hiding "Supes'" as "The Blur," but Clark Kent stayed illogically stationary as a target.

** In fact, it's the same story-line of the recent story-arc "H'el on Earth" that spanned through the comics last year.

*** It's not like the filmmakers don't know it, they're preaching it throughout the entire movie.  In fact, at one point, Kal-el surrenders to the military as part of Zod's ultimatum to Earth.  He sits in an interview room, placidly, in hand-cuffs, the allowance of which is brought up by reporter Lane.  His explanation and one of the best lines in the movie:  "Well, it wouldn't be much of a surrender if I didn't..."

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

In a League of Their Own
or
World's Finest? ("Hrrrrn.")

If Zack Snyder was actually using the comics (pre-Frank Miller*) that Batman and Superman appeared in as inspiration, he might have named the movie "World's Finest" (which was the title of the publication that featured pairings of Batman and Superman). Instead, it has a title that might better fit a WWE match (with a promised sequel after the semi-colon). That's stuffing a lot into a movie title. As it is, the title is a bit mis-leading. Dawn of Justice? Maybe. 

Batman v Superman? That's just a distraction, really. Marquee value. There could have been another title, which is what the movie is really all about (and no, it's not Marvel's over-used "When Titans Clash").

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice does cram a lot of story into its 2 hours and 30 minute running time (there is no Marvel-like preview for another installment, so there’s no need to sit through the credits) , but it manages to do it with efficiency and without neglecting its large cast of characters (which includes nearly everybody from Man of Steel, plus Jesse Eisenberg’s schizzy Lex Luthor Jr. (at least they’re not trotting out a Gene Hackman variation) and his minions, adding Batman characters—actually just Bruce Wayne and Alfred—and tossing in a couple other heroes from the DC Universe as brief cameos) and still giving everybody a chance to shine. The secret is that this one tells a story quite apart from what one is expecting and expanding the Man of Steel universe to tell a story of what being a hero means in the larger scheme of things. It is easily the best movie Zack Snyder has ever made.

But, how is it? As the final credits were starting to dwindle to music credits and the “Thanks to…” a couple of the die-hards in the audience had a quiet post-mortem: “So, what’d you think?” “I don’t know, man, I’ve never had more respect for Superman.” I wanted to turn to them and say “You KNOW Superman isn’t real, don’t you?”

But, that would have spoiled it.

There seems to be a lot of spoilage to BvS:DOJ. The reviews have been harsh, very harsh (Needlessly so, in my estimation—I liked it a lot, certainly more than Man of Steel, certainly more than the latest Star Wars, and certainly more than SPECTRE and the last Avengers film) and seem to be focusing on the needs of the reviewers rather than the movie itself. It might be tough to review this one without SOME prejudice. In many ways, it feels like not only a sequel to Man of Steel, but also to its own previews, which spoils an awful lot of surprises** and which have generated hours of parsing analysis most of which has been wrong or at least premature. In this instance, whetting fandom’s appetites and doing damage-control for nervous-nelly-nerds worked against the movie proper. It seems to have generated a backlash to dump on the movie before any word-of-mouth can be generated (“no WAY are we going to let another ‘review-proof’ movie get by us!”). As usual with rushes to judgment, the consensus is wrong, but it IS interesting to note what the reviewers find necessary to focus on.

European reviewers (who saw it first) dumped on it as an apologia for collateral damage caused by unlimited power (Gosh, who COULD they be talking about?), a female reviewer had only nice things to say about Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman (legitimately, the character and Gadot’s playing of her are a highlight) but had nothing good to say about the men (who all had their female support systems). One gets the impression that people are not reviewing the movie, but their expectations for it—never a good (nor professional) thing to do. Certainly that’s the case with the smattering of reader comments I’ve managed to scan—they read like they see blood in the water and are enjoying a “rip-fest.” At some point, I found the arguments ridiculous and gave up. Someone can point out to me that “RottenTomatoes” (that bastion of reliable taste) gives it a 30% rating, but I can point out that the horror crap-fest The Visitor (1979) has a 100% rating. And Donald Trump is winning the Republican nomination for President.  So much for “the wisdom of the tribe.” Consider this, then, my backlash to the backlash.

So, I’ll stand alone in saying that I thought BvS:DOJ did a fine job of telling its story (with the notable exception of a really messed-up Batmobile sequence that starts well, but gets ham-strung by some clumsy direction/editing in its mid-section), a story—an amalgamation, really—by David Goyer and Chris Terrio, owing a lot to comics writers Frank Miller and Dan Jurgens (both of whom also felt the need to bring in other DC heroes to buttress their stories). Yeah, this one isn’t a “Batman” movie or a “Superman” movie, per se, it’s a chapter in a larger tale in which both of them appear, sort of what the up-coming Captain America: Civil War promises to be (rather than the inconsequential blip that Age of Ultron was), but uses the two familiar heroes as entrée to an expansion of scope in which some sacrifice has to be made to allow some of the other heroes to shine.

Performances are good throughout. With the aforementioned Gadot's commanding performance, any needless worry about "Bat-ffleck" can also be dispelled, as he's great as an older Bruce Wayne, obsessed, passionate, and with none of the angsty world-weariness that Christian Bale brought to his Batman. Not sure why folks are coming down hard on Henry Cavill’s Superman, as he does a fine job (and I'm not a big fan of him as an actor) with a character beset by guilt over the consequences of his actions and the collateral damage that comes even when he’s doing the right thing (all the griping, mine included, about the devastation wreaked in MofS, provides the main motivation for Batman coming back on the scene, seeing Superman as just another “freak dressed like a clown,” but with enough potential to level cities—or attract things that can). Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Larry Fishburne make their moments count—even that guy I can't mention because it would ruin the surprise. And Jeremy Irons' Alfred knows how to make the humor dry without making it a caricature. Holly Hunter is always good to see and she plays a rather feisty U.S. Senator, who plays a lot of scenes with Eisenberg's Luthor and does a nice job of interrupting his brain-flow (which nobody else in the cast seems capable of).

 

Now, I can discuss finer points—Does Ben look stupid in the Bat-suit? (no); Are the fights good? (yup, in fact the Batman fights are the best they've been, but are REALLY scary off-camera)...

Does Doomsday suck? (no, in fact, I was surprised at how effective he/it was); Is Wonder Woman hot? (based on Gadot's performance, such a remark would produce a withering look that would drop you to your knees...and then she would smile). It's solid stuff and will take you places you didn't think the producers (or Warner Brothers) would dare go, and that's saying something...a lot, actually, considering the usual timidity all the studios usually show for already-established comic book franchises. 

So, if the reviews are stopping you from going, you're making a mistake. Reviews never have and never will make a movie good. It's all up there on the screen to be beheld. See for yourself. You decide.

* Frank Miller is an interesting cat. His comics work is truly revolutionary—at least it used to be—but when he transitioned to film, his work scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Robocop2, 3, the Sin City films (and do we even dare mention The Spirit and close the argument?) are all pretty crappy. Miller is better as inspiration than artist because at least there's room for improvement.

** No surprises. BVS:DOJ may have been undone by its "See? you'll really like it!" slew of previews.  I had the same reaction when Spider-man showed up in Captain America: Civil War after Iron Man says "Underoo's?" In the theater seeing the movie for the first time that line would have delighted and surprised me. When I DO see it, I'll be expecting it and grousing that it's not very respectful to Marvel's most iconic character.

All is Lost

Written at the time of the film's release.

Redford at Morning/Sailor Take Warning
or
All Departing the Good Ship Hubris (We're Going to Need a MUCH Bigger Boat!)

I have a friend who once expressed an interest in sailing around the world in a small to medium sail-boat. They're a good friend, but I'd heard enough stories about their seamanship, that I could see it was a Bad Idea.  

Fortunately, I didn't have to say anything that might besmirch our friendship. I was just finishing up Sebastian Junger's "A Perfect Storm" and I left it at his place without mentioning it.

A couple weeks later, that trip never came up again. Manipulative? Sure. But, he's still around.

I should tell him to see this one as a refresher.

Now, All is Lost may have the longest, funniest and seemingly unnecessary scroll of end-credits this year, but that shouldn't discount that it is one terrific movie, with the simplest of plots, only one actor, a minimal of dialogue, and its being the most effective retort to a film-year that has been marooned in digital extravagance but minimal ingenuity.*

All is Lost begins with a "good-bye" letter, read in voice-over. The letter gives no specific information about what the situation is, other than "all is lost now," that he's finally nearing the end of his ordeal, reassuring us that it wasn't for lack of trying and that he "fought the good fight." He'll says he will miss "all of you."

And that he's sorry.

Fade to black.  "8 days earlier."

Boom. "Our Man" (Robert Redford)—as he's called in the credits—is awoken on a boat by a loud bang, and water pouring in. Lousy way to start the morning. He goes on-deck and sees that he's been rammed by a large container of unknown origin floating in the middle of the Indian Ocean. He systematically finds what he needs to anchor the container and steer his boat away from it, so that he can take a look at the gash in the side of his boat and plan his repairs.  He grabs the electronics that have been hit with salt water—laptop, cell-phone, radio—and takes them on-deck. Deep in some back recess of a cubby-hole he finds the fiber-glass repair kit and reads. Then he fashions a handle out of an easily broken piece of wood, whittles it to a point and uses it to pump out the flooded cabin and bring the boat enough out of the water to make repairs, then angles his sails over to the side opposite the gash to keep it above the water-line.

Okay, so that's 20 minutes gone by. The movie presents its protagonist a challenge with several components, which are methodically taken care of, there's no voice-over, no talking to oneself. It's just "this guy," (and you get over it being Redford very quickly), going through the paces of being alone in the middle of nowhere and trying to maintain his only means of support. We don't know who he is or why he's out there. He merely is, and now it appears that instead of sailing around the world, he's up shit-creek without a paddle. Again, no words are spoken, and for the next hour and some odd minutes, there won't be, save for a repeated attempt to hail a presence on the radio, and one long, frustrated "f"-bomb that certainly can be forgiven (and given a PG-13 rating) under the circumstances.

That's everything. A crippled ship on dangerous seas with threatening weather, no communication, and a grizzled old guy who may be out of his depth. Toss in a cruel God with a nasty sense of humor, and set to "liquefy."

Redford has never been better. Frequently, his failing as an actor hasn't been physical, but for some over-thought playing of his lines. That's not here. He's basically living this, doing the work, trying to keep the continuity and pull off a two-hour one-man show of "Sisyphus on the Water" where there's no place to hide. And his lined, haggard face is in that nether-mind-set of showing his thoughts while never betraying them. It's a performance of instincts, and Redford's instincts have always been impeccable. He keeps you engrossed and enmeshed throughout the entire movie.

Credit writer-director Chandor for that (his first movie was the excellent Margin Call).  As simple a project as it might be (and the budget's listed as 9 mil') it's still very close quarters to make a movie in.  The movie does pass the suspension of disbelief rule, as espoused by Johnny Carson.** We're in a limited space no matter where we are, and the only time we're off the boat is when a wide-shot's perspective is needed.  

The end credits are a giggle-fest because the movie is a guy on a boat for two hours, but has such a HUGE list of credits that seem to go on forever (even at one point "thanking" The Pacific Ocean and The Atlantic Ocean). I was amused at all the ADR credits (there is a voice-over at the beginning, but virtually no dialogue to loop). At. All.

But, that shouldn't take away from the film.  

What does take away is the score by Alex Ebert, which is a disaster, at times, confusing one, dramatically, with music that is sonically inappropriate or merely crushingly over-the-top. "Sonically inappropriate" What do we mean by that?   Well, at one point, a rhythmic thrumming is heard as "Our Man" wakes up. Is it a ship coming near? Are we about to be rescued? Why isn't "Our Man" reacting? Why? Because it's only the music...interfering. We can hear it. He cannot (and he's the luckier for it). Look, it's a rookie mistake (and it IS a mistake) to throw in some rhythmic percussion or ANY-thing with a repeating chop, because it can be mistaken for a motor moving unnaturally fast and distinctive from the slow lap of a wave. And when you're in such a limited space, you have to be careful what you do with the music to keep it out of the timbres of the natural sound, ESPECIALLY when the audience is so attuned and taking clues about what's going on from that sound. To add to the earache, Ebert's end-credit song is a stream-of-consciousness list of cliches that ends with "Amen." "Hallelujah," after all, having been taken. It might have been better to leave this one scoreless.

But, that music is the only container-sized blunder threatening this movie's ability to float. And hey, if you want a perfect companion for a double bill with Gravity, All is Lost is your movie.

* And it will continue: if one is paying attention to previews for the coming months, they are awash with dialogue-tropes that one could recite along with the movie: "I'm not afraid of you"/"You should be..." or "I've got it"/"You're going to need it..."  I'll bet those movies also contain "You just don't get it, do you?" and "They're standing right behind me, aren't they?"

** Carson remarked that he couldn't watch any of the "Survivor" shows because he knew that, just out of camera range, there was a Teamster with a maple-bar in his hand.

Triple 9

Waste Not/Want Not
or 
La Kosher Nostra


Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has a very good crew that does very bad things. Made up of former Blackwater agents and current Atlanta cops, he plans and executes heists for high-end clients with particular avaricious interests. He is very good at his work, as he gears his work towards the clock and the Atlanta PD's response time, with the goal of getting in and out in 3 to 4 minutes.

He is very good at his work, but lousy at picking his friends. Right now, he's doing jobs for the Russian Mob, hiding in plain sight as a kosher meat distributor in Atlanta, and run by Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet), whose husband is being held in a Russian prison. Irina's sister Elena (Gal Gadot) is the mother of Michael's son, Felix (Blake McLennan), and to keep a tight rein on Michael, they keep an even tighter grip on Felix. As Irina says at one point, "Love makes great demands on us all."

At the start of the film, Atwood's gang charges into a bank to rob a safe deposit box of diamonds—Irina's husband needs them to bribe his way out—and they do it with brazen efficiency and cunning forethought. The five man crew walks in with automatic weapons, ski masks over their faces—the metal detectors go off but it doesn't matter, police won't arrive for at least four minutes. Everyone down on the floor, and—this is chilling, Facebook friends—Atwood silently grabs the bank manager and shows him...pictures, pictures of his house, pictures of his family, nothing needs to be said. Detective Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson) puts it succinctly: "The monster has gone digital..." (for the record, catlol's are fine).

Criminals being criminals, one of the group grabs some cash and once they're out of the bank and making their way down the freeway, a marker bomb goes off, tainting the money a sulfurous pink, dousing the crooks, and blinding the driver.  The detective in the van a few cars back monitoring sees it all go south and all he can do is keep the situation from wildly escalating out of control. An armed car-jacking provides another vehicle and an IED attached to a gas can incinerates any evidence in the getaway van. Everybody meets later and licks their wounds, and get bad on the one crook for doing something stupid.

The timing might have been better—they should have thought about doing something stupid before they did the job. Because—as there usually is with heist movies—there's gotta be "one more job" before the pay-day on the first one. The diamonds are useless without the verification files—and guess where they're kept?  At Homeland Security. No way. There's no way that they can break into Homeland Security and get the files they need in 3 to 4 minutes (if everything goes well, and it's certain that the guards won't be cooperative). They need at least ten minutes of uninterrupted work, and the only way they can do that is by a distraction—a really big one, one that will generate a "Calling All Cars" response and focus the attention of the Atlanta PD on one location across town, and it has to be done with minimum collateral. The solution is a "Triple 9"—the police call for "Officer Down—Urgent." To buy the time they need, they need to kill another cop.

Triple 9 is a modern version of the old noir heist movies—like Rififi, The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing—about desperate men watching the clock; not only are their "big scores" on a second-by-second schedule, but they're also watching the sand run out in their own personal hourglasses. Usually, the jobs have the doomed inevitability of "the last job," the one they're going to retire on, the one they're building whatever tenuous future they have left with. That they rarely go as planned, and are subject to the vulnerabilities betrayed by their participants in their need, are part and purloined parcel of the sub-genre. Triple 9 is tough, gritty, unsentimental, but the vulnerabilities are just as real and just as harsh in their consequences.

And it moves fast. Director John Hillcoat is on his own time-crunch to get all the characters and relationships in play so they have maximum impact when they pay off—it take a good hour before all the individuals are clearly identifiable and their justifications for their actions made clear—part of that is that quite a few have been culled as expendable as the stakes get higher and the weakest links snap, or merely cut down.

Death is around every corner. Atlanta is a hot-bed of gang activity, which is the main focus of the PD. And while the apprentice criminals are acting up, making a lot of noise, the pros sneak under the radar, unnoticed. They're aided and abetted by some of their own with insider knowledge (hence the 999 idea), their loyalties divided, helping not to solve the crimes they've committed.

And they have the perfect target—Detective Allen has a nephew Chris (Casey Affleck) who has just rotated into the downtown district. He is given the usual rookie treatment of the tenderfoot, but he's no greenhorn, and he's not intimidated by or complacent with any gang member's bull-posturing, an attitude that clearly annoys his partner Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie) whose in Atwood's gang up to his neck and decides that Chris is the perfect 999—his uncle's in the force, has sway—that is, until Chris saves his life in a struggle for a weapon with a gang-member. But, loyalty only goes so far—about the length of a coin. Or the trajectory of a bullet.

Production values? The film is shot on location and, let's face it, when you're dealing with urban warfare, you don't do a lot of set-dressing. The tattoo budget must be impressive, though. And it's a good thing for the film-makers the price of gasoline has dropped. Hillcoat is fast and efficient and doesn't waste a lot of frames. More importantly, in this day and age, he doesn't shirk on them, either. And the actors are given latitude to set themselves apart from each other in terms of style and attitude, separating their characters in squads of those who know they're living in a tragedy and those who don't. Chiwetel Ejiofor, in particular, makes the most of the former camp, even as he pushes through it with a fierce defiance. Casey Affleck and Anthony Mackie are two of the best second-tier actors out there, who can make A-listers look flat in comparison, or as if they're working too hard, and their relationship is actually the strongest of any two characters in the film, in good and bad times, just by the looks they throw at each other. As per usual, the women are given short-shrift in this type of film. There's less dimension to Winslet and Gadot, merely because they're scowling as much as the Big Boys, although the casualness with which they do it should be noted—as if Winslet played villains every day.

The one relationship you don't believe is the Affleck-Harrelson nephew-uncle relationship; you don't believe that these two could ever be related to each other, despite Harrelson's mother-bear reactions to his nephew's predicaments. Harrelson's veteran cop is so tainted and Affleck's so effectively unaffected that you wonder how much time they actually spent with each other to have one influence the other. The script speaks of a bond, but if Hillcoat short-changed anything in the film, it's the scenes between Affleck and Harrelson...or the rehearsal time needed to make them a bit more sympatico.

The movie's not for everyone. It's a hard "R" for violence and language (no sex) and for the depiction of human misery that surrounds the events and informs them. Other than that, the story is a late-model LED-illuminated version of the type.

As they say in The Asphalt Jungle, Crime is only a left handed form of human endeavor. But in the age of cell-phones and IED's, check that bracelet to make that left hand doesn't get blown off.

Now I've Seen Everything Dept.: The Batman

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opens this week. 

We've already done Now I've Seen Everything—Superman. About time we did something with DC Comics' other big hero (we'd do one on Wonder Woman...if a movie had ever been made). Late update: one has...and it's great.

Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Nahhh....

The success of Superman created a demand for costumed adventurers in the new "comic-magazines" of the late 1930's. National Publications, the publisher of Superman wanted more, and they bought an idea from young Robert Kahn, who worked under the name Bob Kane. Kane imagined a swash-buckling detective-adventurer who wore a full costume as disguise for his bourgeois alter-ego. He was Zorro on the East Coast. The Scarlet Pimpernel in Gotham. 

But, "The Batman" was just some rough costume sketches until Kane collaborated with writer Bill Finger (who, with Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice will finally get a co-creator credit for Batman). A lot of the mythos of Batman came from Finger, just as plots and villain designs came from Kane's stable of artists like Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang. But, Kane had his name on the contract (due to the fact that, at the time of selling the Batman idea to  the comics, he was underage, and his father saw to him receiving creator credit (something Superman's creators, Siegel and Shuster, did not see happen until late in their lives) and forever, throughout the story of Batman, Kane has had sole credit.

Even though he entered comics a year later than Superman, Batman had the first live-action presentation in the movies. Maybe, because he was an ordinary man with extraordinary abilities—but no ability to fly—he was easier to present on-screen. 

And for some reason, Batman might just be a bit more popular than Superman. In the comics they're presented as polar opposites (if frequent collaborators)—the Boy Scout and the Mad Man. Superman is an alien, who reflects the best in us. But Batman IS us, and not at our best. He's the Revenger, his altruism tinged with darkness. Deeds, not words. He's not a rescuer in the nick of time. He's the leg-breaker after the fact.  He's not about law. He's about justice.

This panel (from "Kingdom Come") puts it as succinctly as possible

He's still a hero, though, and as the panel above says, he has one thing in common with Superman. He's an orphan. He learned early about the sanctity of life and (even though the movies glaringly fudge it), he will not take a life...even amongst the worst of his foes. Batman is dark (yes), cynical (sure), blunt (very!), but still burns the candle of redemption in his soul. Maybe that's why he's been a subject of lampooning over the years. The intellectuals, writers and morally compromised producers, don't buy that he might still hold that flicker of hope in all that darkness.That's what a hero is all about, super or otherwise. Even when the Knight is dark.

To the Bat-cave!

Batman (Lambert Hillyer, 1943) The first film version of Bob Kane (and Bill Finger)'s Caped Crusader is this 15 (exciting!) chapter serial (preceding the Kirk Alyn Superman serial by five years) featuring Batman (Lewis Wilson) and Robin the Boy Wonder (Douglas Croft, the 17 year old actor) against a dastardly Japanese spy Dr. Daka (J. Carroll Naish) who is trying to steal Gotham City's stockpile of radium, using his radio-controlled zombies to accomplish the task as part of the Japanese war-efforts against the U.S.

Yes, the first Batman movie was war-time propaganda, and insulting war propaganda at that. Batman is not a costumed vigilante, he is a government agent (did they vet him him at all when he showed up in a bat-costume?) saving us all from the machinations of Hirohito and his minions. How insulting? Check out this description of an abandoned Little Tokyo, where Daka has his headquarters—"This was part of a foreign land, transplanted bodily to America and known as little Tokyo. Since a wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs, it has become virtually a ghost street." Well, Gotham City must be on the West Coast of the U.S. as the "rounding up" stopped east of Salt Lake City (and "shifty-eyed" is an odd insult when the hero is wearing a mask that makes him look...well, "shifty-eyed."

There are two versions of this serial, one heavily censored of its racism (or as much as it could while still keeping J. Carroll Naish in "Charlie Chan" make-up) and the full "historically accurate" non-PC version. The serial is notable for introducing the "Batcave" below Wayne Manor (which had never appeared in the comics before).

You want some irony to end the story. "Batman" was produced by Columbia Pictures, which is now owned by Sony Pictures—a Japanese company.

Batman (Lewis Wilson) contemplates that final irony.

Batman and Robin (Spencer Bennett, 1949) A second Batman serial was produced in 1949—just after Superman's first multi-chapter movie, and with the war being over, Batman could go back to being a "glamorous" crime-fighter (the narrator's words) with the tacit approval of Commissioner Gordon (Lyle Talbot). This time, Robert Lowery plays Batman and Johnny Duncan (age 25) played Robin (who gets his name in the title this time).

The villain is The Wizard (his identity kept secret until the end), who steals a top secret weapon—a "remote control." Sure, it sounds like a wonderful invention, but in the wrong hands it could be used for evil—like disrupting your future television watching, or confounding your wife about why it needs to be so damn complicated. But, in this case, it is to take command of any vehicle—car, plane, submarine—that he sets his gyros and dials to, and even, when the gizmo starts to spark, to blow things up. Dastardly. Unfortunately, he needs diamonds to fuel the thing (VERY practical invention!), and so he recruits a gang of thugs to steal diamonds any chance they get.

Who is the mysterious Wizard (and why does he wear his costume even when he's alone)? The answer may not surprise you very much. A compilation of this serial was released to theaters in the mid-60's, and a viewing by producer William Dozier inspired his production of what would be a mid-season replacement series for ABC television, that would become the image of Batman in the minds of many for years to come.

Bat-transition

Batman (Leslie H. Martinson, 1966) Holy Susan Sontag, Batman! A viewing of the earlier Batman serial begat the "Batman" TV-show, the success of which spurred 20th Century Fox (still reeling from movie cost-overruns) to create a full-length motion picture teaming Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward) against a phalanx of dastardly desperadoes—the Joker (Ceasar Romero), Catwoman (Lee Merriwether, subbing for the absent Julie Newmar), The Penguin (Burgess Meredith), and The Riddler (Frank Gorshin). The plot is some nonsense about an alliance of Batman's villains de-hydrating U.N. officials down to dust and holding them for ransom. The ambassador-jerking-plot aside, there are three new Bat-vehicles (the -Copter, -Boat and -Cycle) to gawk at (the movie stops dead to introduce them) and there is just enough wit in the script so you know that no one's taking any of it too seriously, if at all. And if things aren't as tight or as pointedly comic-satiric as they were on the show's first season, well, whatever. It's still extraordinarily colorful, and West still treads that dangerous razor's edge of serious/camp ("Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb!") without going too far over the top.

The four villains (and Ward's Robin)—main-stays of the show—play their roles at top-volume without much range or hint of subtlety (although Burgess Meredith's FDR/Popeye blend for The Penguin is a stitch *Waugh!*), with the exception of the truly bi-polar performance of Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, practically quivering with psychosis. (Ritalin that, Batman!) The film provides a bigger canvas, with longer takes, but, except for the more elaborate practical props (we're not talking about the rubber shark here, but the vehicles), it has the same aesthetics of the television show, done cheaply, but colorfully.

It is silly. It is goofy. But, one has to acknowledge that if this version of Batman and his villains hadn't been so iconic and so fly-paperish, subsequent film-makers wouldn't have needed to brainstorm so long and hard to come up with an effective Bat-antidote when tackling the new movie versions. Holy inappropriate!

Holy Love-Boat, Batman! Merriweather, Gorshin, Meredith and Romero
as Catwoman, Riddler, Penguin, and Joker

Bat-transition

Batman (Tim Burton, 1989) Despite its overwhelming financial success this was probably a career mis-step for director Burton, but his design sensibility is one of the highlights of making "Batman" a legitimate live-action hero (especially considering the last person in the role was TV's Adam West). Everything about this adaptation was controversial to the fan-boys who didn't want the character to be turned back into a joke. Well, maybe not a joke, but Burton certainly wanted to explore the twisted side of somebody with a lot of dough who likes to beat up people. And the biggest controversy was casting Michael Keaton (who was Burton's "Beetlejuice") as Bruce Wayne and Batman. 

Twerpy little Keaton...as Batman? Actually, it made perfect sense...to twerpy little Burton. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't have to dress up as a bat to scare people. But a couch-candidate like Keaton's Wayne? Who better?

The script keeps it lean and mean—no Robin, but plenty of toys and a certain kind of fairy-tale spin to the whole proceedings with the chief ogre falling to Jack Nicholson's movie-stealing turn as The Joker. Kim Basinger served the role as damsel-in-distress, but, really it could have been anybody, and the movie was top-heavy with odd casting—Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon, Billy Dee Williams as the future Two-Face, Jack Palance as a mob boss, and Hammer Studios veteran Michael Gough as an elderly avuncular Alfred. 

Two things bother this Bat-purist: 1) first, here, it is Jack Napier, the future Joker, who kills Thomas and Martha Wayne in Crime Alley that fateful night (and that's a bit too movie-convenient and "on the nose") and 2) Batman kills. It's the same kind of life-taking one sees in the Bond films—anonymous henchmen get caught up in the fireballs of explosions—but here The Bat sends a remote-control Batmobile to drop a couple of factory-destroying explosives to do the dirty work knowing full well there are people inside. But moral quibbles and source inequities aside, it made bat-zillions.

Batman Returns (1992) With the successes of Beetlejuice, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands behind him, Tim Burton probably felt he could do no wrong. If studio executives didn't quite understand what he had in mind, at least the movie-going public seemed to respond to it. And, indeed, he had much more creative control over Batman Returns than the previous one—the executive producers were off mis-managing Sony Pictures, he had his choice of screenwriters, and he got to pick his villains—going with a trio of animal avatars: the bat, the cat and the penguin. Casting? No problem. Danny DeVito was just the right size and demeanor for Oswald Cobblepot, "The Penguin," an orphan outcast manipulated by a toy magnate (Christopher Walken) into running for mayor of Gotham City and Michelle Pfeiffer camped it up (replacing a pregnant Annette Bening) as Walken's harried secretary Selina Kyle, who would discover she may have nine lives, and thus become The Catwoman ("Hear me roar"). 

The movie made a lot of money, but, due to Burton's penchant for the ghastly, upset a lot of children (or at least their parents), and a lot of studio execs who took angry phone-calls from the merchandisers who attached their products to a pretty grisly little exercise. But what'd they expect? Burton took The Penguin character and re-imagined him away from Burgess Meredith's pfaw-Roosevelt, and turned him into a...freakish penguin-man, with flippers for hands, jagged yellow teeth, and what appeared to be black bile spewing from his mouth. The Catwoman was a split-personality (not unlike Batman, the script points out) who was more feminist statement than character. Aesthetically, it seemed like the movie was just a string of one-liners and ironies as opposed to being a solid screenplay. The film did good box-office (though not as good as the first) and amidst all the outcry Burton was relieved of his Bat-duties (he exec-produced the next one in name only) and moved on, reputation a bit sullied.

Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995) Burton was out. So Warner Brothers brought in the likeliest candidate to match Burton's style—Joel Schumacher? The first sign of trouble was that Michael Keaton said "no" to a big, fat pay-check after reading the script (by Lee and Janet Scott Bachler and Akiva Goldsman) and after a meeting with the director. Val Kilmer was hired in his place, Nicole Kidman (just starting to surge into making a name for herself other than "Mrs. Tom Cruise") was cast as "the girlfriend"—she's a psychiatrist this time, although they don't do much with that of any impact, save for a brief flirtation with Bruce Wayne forgetting his Bat-past—and, after rumors of the role showing up in Burton's movies, Chris O'Donnell was hired to play Dick Grayson, aka Robin the Questionably Adult Wonder. As the villains, Tommy Lee Jones replaced Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face)—for no good reason other than marquee value—and young up-and-comer Jim Carrey was put in the role of Ace Ventura, pet detective (actually Edward Nigma, aka The Riddler). 

Of course, they wanted Carrey. Carrey was hot box-office. But, as was found putting Richard Pryor in a Superman movie, at some point, there's some confusion as to whether it's a Batman movie or a Jim Carrey movie. One gets the impression that Carrey basically made up bits of business along the way in every scene that he's in. Two-Face barely registers. 

While Batman Returns teetered precariously close to letting the villains dominate the film, Batman Forever goes right over the cliff-hanger. Where Burton's films are dark and noirish, Schumacher's is day-glo and neon-lit (or as Warners envisioned "more family-friendly"), leaning more towards the cartoonish than the moody. Perhaps that's why there's a lot of credibility-defying with Batman landing from stories-high jumps without breaking his legs and having the Batmobile drive up the side of a building. After all, as Batman (incongruously) says "Chicks dig the car."

There is a fan-theory (groping for justification of the tone-change) that if Burton's first movie represented the Batman of the early 40's and ...Returns the more jokey 1950's, then Batman Forever shows the Batman of the 1960's, camp and colorful, bright and fanciful. Well, that's the theory, anyway. The next movie belied the theory.

Carrey's Riddler and Jones' Two-Face (the first time that villain had made a media appearance).

  

Batman and Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997) A fourth entry in the series came about and this time, Kilmer bowed out (there were conflicts with Schumacher, evidently), George Clooney stepped in, and there were three villains—Mr. Freeze (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was paid $25 million for the role), Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), and Bane (Robert Swenson). Back were Chris O'Donnell's Robin and Batgirl was introduced (played by Alicia Silverstone).

The plot—by Akiva Goldsman—revolves around Freeze wanting to bring a new ice age to Gotham City, in order for Ivy to repopulate the area with plants, once humans are out of the way. Makes, uh...sense. But, the dialogue is one pun after another, and, if the previous film went over a cliff, this one resembled an iceberg calving and capsizing.

And sinking. Warners stopped the franchise at this point, and George Clooney has made a joke out of his appearing in this every time he wants to be self-deprecating ("I killed the franchise," he says) and then made a point of picking his movie roles more carefully. Schumacher, for his part, blames everyone but himself.

It is difficult to sit through Batman and Robin; I have to confess I've never actually watched the entire thing in "real-time", scanning through the "busy" parts on fast-forward, finding the movie to be frenetically tiresome. To be sure, there are worse super-hero movies, but they are usually worse by accident or mis-calculation. Batman and Robin is bad by design, the film-makers knowing full well what they were doing, but shocked to find that it was not accepted.

"I won't be back?" Schwarzenegger, Thurman and Bane react to no sequel.

Batman Begins (2005) The failure of Batman and Robin left Warners' most popular franchise in limbo. Here was a property that had made a lot of money that was merely languishing. Attempts were made to start over. For awhile, it was rumored that director Darren Aronofsky was working with "The Dark Knight Returns" writer Frank Miller to make "Batman: Year One." But when all was said and done, director Christopher Nolan was handed the keys to Warner Brothers' staked-like-a-vampire "Batman" series to "revamp" the franchise back into fighting strength. He's aided immeasurably by a good cast, particularly Christian Bale using George Bush boorishness for his portrayal of Gothan City billionaire Bruce Wayne, who dresses as a bat to carry on his murdered father's legacy of helping the down-trodden and oppressed. But the top-heavy cast also includes Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson (and Katie Holmes). Like the old joke goes: "Any 'names?'"

But that origin story. That one always gets in the way—starting with the Wayne kid's parents being murdered? Not even Tim Burton led with that. No, Nolan juggles the time-line a bit to start the movie with Bruce Wayne—and us—caught off-guard and a bit lost, fighting for his life in a foreign prison. He's recruited by cultist Ra's Al Ghul and the League of Assassins to maximize his potential and leave his past behind--a past that is slowly released by Nolan in dribs and drabs for viewing. Then, with his pilgrimage and training complete, it's back to Gotham City for acquiring "all those wonderful toys."

Nolan and scripter David Goyer have a lot of ground to cover with a lot of characters—two villains (maybe three), Gordon's story and Alfred's, the fate of the Wayne fortune, and Bruce's childhood girlfriend, Rachel Dawes, who acts as his conscience...and oh, yeah, the intertwining plots of the villains. Nolan/Goyer keep everything moving and even pull off a surprise or two, but the final attack on Gotham City is an over-extended and splintered mess that focuses on too many characters for its own good and too much property damage for the city's. You begin to wonder what's been saved. But there's enough promise to whet one's appetite for the inevitable follow-up.

"Batman" begins

The Dark Knight (2008) At the end of Batman Begins, Nolan teased a potential second film with a criminal who left a "Joker" card at his crime scenes. With that kind of promise, there had to be a pay-off for fans and Nolan and Goyer met the challenge with The Dark Knight. Nolan's second "Batman" film raises the stakes for the entire cast, adding Heath Ledger's trickster Joker and Aaron Eckhart as D.A. Harvey Dent, who has taken up with Wayne old flame Rachel Dawes (now played by Maggie Gyllenhall). Ledger's unique take on The Joker (after the usual fan-boy kvetching) grabbed all the attention—and the Best Supporting Oscar that year—but the extremely well-integrated story-line combining The Joker, Two-Face, Batman, and Rachel and the intertwining of their fates makes this one the most cohesive of Nolan's latter films; it's a puzzle that fits together intricately and inelegantly, creating a satisfying whole despite the chaos (and a couple large eyes of a plot-hole or six) that churns in its center.

And it is chaos. Some critics have made too much of Ledger's Joker saying he's an agent of it, while also concocting elaborate plots that require a lot of preparation, seemingly belying the words. Yet, he is chaotic, and not just in the results he produces. The very idea that he does one thing and says another shows him to be inconsistent, undependable, untrustworthy, mercurial, and as changeable as the stories he spins for his smile of scars. He's just the guy who will blow away any elaborately arranged house of cards, the opposite of Wayne's predictable planner and schemer, a man not unlike the director.

Heath Ledger, sure.  But The Dark Knight is Harvey Dent's story (played by Aaron Eckhardt)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)  Nolan's third (and presumably final) "Batman" movie ends the story quite definitively, by providing "The Dark Knight," eight years in retirement, with one last challenge that in many ways reflects his origins. It's a good full-circle approach, and makes one suspect that Nolan may have had this as a grand design, rather than, say, just pulling out elements of Batman Begins to tie everything in a nice thematic bow.  

But those elements feel like after-thoughts a bit, hanging threads that mar the look of a nice design. The most interesting aspect of TDKR is Tom Hardy's Bane, a hired thug, with several masters, but who appears to be working on his own. Bane is another "Dark Knight" opposite: where Bruce Wayne is enmeshed in armor, Bane is pretty much organic, less of a construct. Stronger and faster than Batman, he can best him in a fair fight...and cruelly take advantage of the loser's injuries so he'll never get up again. Where Wayne's face is exposed in his disguise, Bane's is covered with a morphine breather, where Wayne tries to protect Gotham City, Bane wants to level it.  

That central conflict provides the momentum of the movie, but there are many side-trips for the rest of the cast, including a young beat-cop, inspired by Batman as a child (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and another creature of the night—a cat-burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway)—who seems to have as many loyalties as lives. And the film ends with things still in a state of flux, as Gotham City needs to rebuild and with the fates of many of the characters in question.

The only thing definitive is Batman, who, after a career of working in the shadows, has been forced into the light and ends his work with a blinding flash.

The Dark Knight rises...like the sun.

Actually, living well is the best revenge.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice  (Zack Snyder, 2016) Well, living well is the best revenge in the Nolan Universe. In the Zack Snyder Universe, you go for overkill. A DC Universe movie with Batman in it and a direct sequel to the Nolan-produced Superman movie, Man of Steel, BvS shows a retired Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck, who's very good), who is devastated by the carnage in Metropolis caused by the Superman-Zod fight in that movie and sees Superman as a threat to the Earth. He's being manipulated (somewhat) by Jesse Eisenberg's tech-mogul Alexander Luthor, but the fear is definitely there, and so Batman does what Batman does—starts planning for the battle with the aid of Alfred (now Jeremy Irons) to take on a being who can snap off his arms or fry him like a chicken on a spit.

The Batman side of things is more than a little inspired by Frank Miller's fundamental "The Dark Knight Returns" (right down to cribbing lines), which debuted in 1986. Fans had been clamoring to see this Batman for 30 years, and then when they get him—yeah, but you can't trust fan-boys to be consistent, just as they expect their Batmen to be consistent (which they never have been). Wayne Manor is a dilapidated ruin—Wayne lives in a post-modern lake house with a lot of available light and the Bat-cave is still full of wonderful toys, but contains an empty defaced Robin costume as a memorial. His Batman is bitter, still obsessive, has seen allies go down or been corrupted. Something made him quit. But now, the threat has revived nightmares and he's supposed to be the nightmare. So he comes back, and even though he's been out of action, he still knows how to make an entrance. 

Even without the Miller inspiration, this is probably the most pulp-like Batman of the bunch. The fights are certainly the best choreographed—that's always been a problem—no matter who was directing.

*Zowie* kids, that's how Batman in the comics fights. At least how the latter-day Batman fights. Now, the movie itself might be a little too "inside" and have a few too many "Easter eggs" for the casual viewer, but this is a really good version of Batman—a step up, even, from the Nolan representation, despite having to share the Universe with other heroes (but it's at least not dominated by villains, and one could even make a case for Batman being among them). It will be interesting to see what they do with this one.

Justice League (Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon, 2017) When Christopher Reeve got the Superman gig back in 1977, he called Sean Connery (famously James Bond) to ask how he could avoid being typecast. Connery's reply was reasonable: "First, be good enough to GET type-cast."

If there's a problem with Zack Snyder's DC movies, it's that his plan was to never make a good movie, but make a series of movies that fit together into a larger story. It's the height of hubris. Don't make a movie thinking about sequels. Make a movie that's good enough that audiences (and studios) WANT a sequel. So his Man of Steel begat BvS: Dawn of Justice which begat Justice League, designed to be a two part movie—until Snyder's corporate masters at Warner saw the result of the first one and brought in Joss Whedon to make it a suitable standalone film. 

So, how does "The Batman" fit into all this? Affleck's Bruce Wayne is remorseful after the events of BvS, which sees Superman dead as a result of the fight with Luthor's Zod-monster, so he recruits members of gifted individuals—personally, Arthur Curry and Barry Allen—to join him and Wonder Woman to fight whatever threat he has had visions about. Also, inspired by Luthor's resuscitation of Zod, he wants to raise Superman from the dead (and geez, THAT worked out well...), a mission that he will sacrifice his life to achieve ("Suicide? Good plan, Wayne" says Aquaman Arthur Curry). We get a new Commissioner Gordon (J.K. Simmons) out of the deal, but with the critical drubbing Justice League took, Warners dropped Henry Cavill's Superman and Affleck's Batman, preferring to go another direction with a standalone film featuring Robert Pattinson.

 

The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022) Well, this is a little different: Reeves' stripped down punk version (despite having three villains—The Riddler (Paul Dano), The Penguin (Colin Farrell) and the Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz)—and a fourth if you count John Turturro's Carmine Falcone, and even more if you count every corrupt Gotham official exposed in city government and the police department) has Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) in his second year as a vigilante, no longer just a rumor, but respected (just enough) by one Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright, who almost has as much screen-time as RP) that he's allowed in full costume on a crime scene. The police make sarcastic envious jokes. But no one laughs. He's a detective in this one. And he's enough of a bad-ass that he doesn't have to hide in the shadows, waiting for the moment when a bad guy turns around and he's right in his face, but, instead, deliberately walks...slowly...up to perps before laying down the smack-down. As the narration says "I don't have to hide in the shadows. I am the shadows."

 

And...for the first time in a movie featuring any incarnation of Batman (except Adam West's), he doesn't kill anybody...which, considering the inspiration was the witnessing of his parents gunned down in the streets, was kind of the point!

 

Thanks to all this methodology, Reeves' "take" is a three hour procedural, like a "Law and Order" episode in leather, but it's almost worth it, given that it's a story of how the hero ultimately sees himself less as an avenging angel than a guardian one. That takes time. One comes away wishing it was shorter (it FEELS like three hours!), but one is hard-pressed to think of what could be cut without screwing up the story. The fact that the Warner Brothers released it in this length says something about how they might have learned a lesson in making movies (finally).