Punch Drunk Critics reports that in this Gotham the petty criminals scatter the moment the Bat-signal shows up in the sky, which tells you the Batman here is feared long before he is seen. The Batman plays less like a superhero movie than like a detective mystery, a crime thriller set in a city torn apart by corruption and privilege. Reeves, who earlier made Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, gives us a hero in his second year of crime-fighting. He is still more myth than man, a physical presence the underworld fears and most of the police distrust.

Punch Drunk Critics also points out that the film spares us another flashback to the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, a scene other versions have made us sit through again and again. Reeves starts from what that loss left behind: Thomas Wayne’s dream of a mayoral run and the ambitious Wayne Renewal project have turned to dust. Film Colossus reads renewal as the film’s biggest theme, and the name of that failed project makes it hard to disagree. The same analysis notes that Bruce’s reasons for becoming Batman are vengeful at the start, which gives the story somewhere to take him. Of the police, Punch Drunk Critics says, only Lt. James Gordon, played by Jeffrey Wright, seems to trust the costumed figure. The Holy Goof likes that Batman works with the police rather than against them, even when the officers resent it.

Robert Pattinson carries the film. The Guardian sees an elegantly wasted rock-star recluse, willowy and dandyish in a black suit, dark hair falling over his face. In costume, the same man magically trebles in bulk and his whole being is weaponised into a slab-like impassivity. The performance lives in the distance between those two images: a man who barely seems present out of costume, and a figure who fills the frame once the cowl is on. Punch Drunk Critics goes further and calls his portrayal of Gotham’s greatest detective truly out of this world. That reviewer admits that halfway through he told a friend the film was pretty damn incredible, and the friend answered that there were still 90 minutes left. He says he had not felt any of that length. The Guardian, by contrast, calls the film overlong, and the two verdicts mark the line along which opinion on this film divides.

The Riddler is where Reeves shows his nerve. Paul Dano‘s killer has nothing to do with Jim Carrey‘s neon-green suit and orange hair. As Punch Drunk Critics puts it, there is no cheesy hat and no goofy nursery rhymes, and in an early scene he hides in the shadows and savagely beats the Mayor to death. That review compares him to a serial killer from a David Fincher movie, and The Guardian reaches for Saw, adding that he wears a rubber gimp mask for his many social media appearances. He sets out to kill the corrupt Gotham establishment one by one, among them Mayor Don Mitchell and the district attorney Gil Colson, played by Peter Sarsgaard. His anger is aimed at political classes who congratulate themselves on rooting out the drug dealer Sal Maroni while a new narcotic called drops spreads through the city and law enforcement looks the other way. That grievance gives the murders a target. He leaves clues meant for Batman’s eyes only, and Punch Drunk Critics describes the result as an intellectual battle in which the killer stays a few steps ahead.

The duel is also where the film wobbles. The Guardian is blunt: the Riddler’s puzzles are not particularly ingenious or even important to the story. For a time the film promises a mystery about municipal corruption and an unmasking with a satisfying resolution, but the same review calls what follows a pretty feeble non-ending that sheepishly sidesteps the hero’s existential crisis. That is the tiresome third act The Guardian complains about, and the tone, the runtime and the final stretch are the very points that drew criticism when the film opened. The complaint is fair. A film that spends so long on the slow work of investigation owes us a closing answer with some weight, and the puzzles, which should have been the engine of that answer, turn out to be decoration.

The craft is another matter. The Guardian calls the film tremendously designed and visually spectacular, with great set pieces and juddering, sternum-shivering impacts coming at you out of the darkness. Greig Fraser shot it with Industrial Light & Magic’s StageCraft virtual production technology, and the film has more than 1,500 visual effects shots. Michael Giacchino composed the score, and critics singled it out for praise along with the cinematography. The Guardian credits Christopher Nolan with pioneering the brutal, murky Gotham that makes Batman imaginable on screen, and Reeves builds on that world instead of repeating it. In his version, as Punch Drunk Critics writes, the hopelessness reaches the bones of the city’s citizens, and even its heroes accept that what they do is futile. Batman may fight for the people of Gotham, but he is not naive about his odds.

The supporting cast pulls its weight. The Guardian finds unassuming good performances from Wright and from John Turturro, who plays the crime boss Carmine Falcone, and says Zoë Kravitz’s superpower is charisma. Her Selina Kyle is Bruce’s partner in crime, and The Holy Goof notes that she is as flawed as he is, which keeps the pair from reading as a polished hero and his sidekick. Colin Farrell is, in Punch Drunk Critics’ words, unrecognizable as the Penguin, one of the gangsters who have taken over the city. The Holy Goof goes the furthest, naming Andy Serkis as the best Alfred even with so many great versions before him, with a nod to Michael Caine. I would not rank him quite that high, but a new Alfred who has to follow Caine and still be noticed has done his job.

The production history shows in the finished film. A Batman film was announced in October 2014 with Ben Affleck as the lead; he stepped down in January 2017. Reeves took over the following month, removed the DC Extended Universe connections and chose a younger Batman, earlier in his vigilante career. He drew on the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the New Hollywood era, and on comics such as Year One, The Long Halloween and Ego. Filming ran from January 2020 to March 2021, with months lost to the pandemic, and took place across the United Kingdom, in England and Scotland and on soundstages at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden. Detective work over fireworks, and a story that ties Gotham’s rot to Bruce’s own family, follow directly from that brief.

Audiences came in large numbers. The film grossed over $772 million worldwide against a budget of $185 to 200 million, making it Warner Bros.’ highest-grossing pandemic release. It is also one of the longest superhero films ever made, and the runtime is among the points critics raised. A sequel, The Batman: Part II, is scheduled for February 18, 2028, and a spin-off series about the Penguin, starring Farrell, debuted on HBO in late 2024.

The weaknesses are specific: the length, puzzles that matter little to the plot, and an ending that lets its hero off lightly. They are real, and they keep the film from the top rank. Against them stands a crime story told as a crime story, with a victim, a motive and a city whose institutions share the blame. IGN Latinoamérica argues that it is time to stop treating The Dark Knight as the only benchmark for Batman films, because that attachment closes off other ways of exploring the genre, and Reeves’s film backs the argument. Instead of competing with Nolan on his own ground, it moves the character toward the darker, quieter corner of Gotham that Punch Drunk Critics describes, and that is where it does its best work.