Edgar Cochran ✝️’s review published on Letterboxd:
"EL SEÑOR DE LA NOOOCHEEEEEE"
-Don Omar
I certainly live in a special era. The DCEU was sinking DC’s reputation and here comes Reeves, the intrepid Cloverfield (2008) guy that got money from remaking a Swedish horror masterpiece and the Apes franchise for taking serial killer elements from Fincher, the suburban terror from Carpenter, the nighttime gritiness of early DePalma, and neo-noir elements to make an emo detective Batman that makes stupid newbie mistakes and hesitates to jump from a building because he’s during his first year of undertaking the hero crusade in the “city beyond salvation”. The latter phrase was used by Nolan and is reused here. The tones get darker for the character as generations go by, not only in cinema, and features the three facets of the character: as Bruce Wayne, as The Batman, and under disguise (as a piece of trivia, Bruce enters the Iceberg Clue under the said three forms).
Some shots linger too much for the sake of creating a thriller environment in a self-imposed and forced attempt of self-contemplative "impressionism", while we see splashes of neo-noir invade the city under shadows of darkness and flames, but they do the work nicely. Turturro and Farrell are fantastic in their renditions, Dano does whatever he can best with the script he’s handled, and without saturating the almost three-hour show, the action packs true excitement when it kicks in (the reference to Carpenter’s Christine [1983] is beautiful as it uses the ultimate badass version of the Batmobile as a source of intimidation). The film is plagued with comic book references, especially Year One, Earth One and No Man’s Land, and although the climax does seem like the cheapest terrorist attack in Hollywood’s film history, it is the scenario for creating the greatest shot of the film in which Batman uses a red flashlight to guide citizens across the water.
Despite being the grimmer take on the character as of now in film, this is no action exploitation with a high body count: repercussions of violence and vengeance are fully understood, as well as the value of life and the impact of a loss; imagery ranges from biblical (don’t tell me you didn’t see Moses guiding people through the waters after the departure from Egypt) to Batman being shown upside down after The Penguin’s car chase like he was a bat. Easter eggs are scattered here and there noticed with a second watch.
Also, it is speculated that the filmmakers decided not to use Don Omar’s “El Señor de la Noche” as the official theme out of fear of the certainty of winning the Academy Award for Best Song*.
74/100
*P.S. Speaking of which, this meme is a masterpiece and the parallelisms are actually so well done! Can’t stop laughing.
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