The Batman Finds the Detective in the Costume

Worth watching if you like crime films more than superhero films: this is a serial-killer procedural wearing a cape, and the cape is almost incidental. Three hours sounds punishing until the Riddler's first crime scene lands — ciphers, floor plans, a victim posed as a riddle — and you realize Reeves means the detective stuff for real.

What works

Pattinson's emo-garage-band Bruce shouldn't work and completely does; the film understands Batman as a weird little guy in armor rather than a billionaire power fantasy. Kravitz matches him beat for beat, and Dano's Riddler is genuinely unnerving rather than theatrical. Greig Fraser's Gotham is all sodium light and wet asphalt. The Nirvana needle-drop tells you exactly which decade of comics this lives in, and it's the right one.

What wobbles

177 minutes, and the third act has two endings too many — the film climaxes, exhales, then climaxes again. Trim twenty minutes and this sits with the best of the character. As it stands: the best Batman detective story on film, docked for indulgence.