Sleuth or dare
15 ★★★★★ In cinemas now
This was supposed to be the first solo movie for Ben Affleck’s rather unique take on the Dark Knight. Sadly, fans never really took to the bland, slightly depressed, middle-aged Caped Crusader he played in the dreadful Batman v Superman and those two bloated Justice League movies.
But, freed from franchise-building obligations with this standalone film, director Matt Reeves (Planet Of The Apes) decided to go a bit leftfield.
Turning the clock back to Bruce Wayne’s second year as a bat-themed vigilante, Robert Pattinson plays a hard-boiled
Batman in a dense detective story that borrows heavily from classic gumshoe movies of the 1940s.
It’s Halloween night in a rain-lashed Gotham City and a not-quite-fully formed Dark Knight is prowling the streets under the dingy light of the bat sign.
This is early in reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne’s vigilante career and, while he’s earned the uneasy trust of Commissioner Gordon ( Jeffrey Wright), he hasn’t developed those hi-tech gadgets.
His batsuit looks like it was assembled after a trip to an Army & Navy Store, his Batmobile is just a souped-up muscle car and his main weapons are an iron jaw and an almost suicidal urge to pick himself up after every beating.
The closest we get to a superpower is his Sherlock-like brain which Gordon harnesses to help him track down a serial killer – Paul Dano’s The Riddler, the creepiest incarnation yet.
Wayne’s investigations lead him deep into the darkest corners of an almost black and white Gotham City. An unrecognisable Colin Farrell is a mobster nicknamed The Penguin while Zoë Kravitz is slinky femme fatale catburglar Selina Kyle.
Pattinson and Kravitz share a fizzing chemistry, Gotham has never looked so menacing, and I can’t remember a threehour movie flying by so quickly.
An almost black and white Gotham has never looked so menacing