Tells a truly fascinating Batman story. One with layered new takes on classic characters, a noir vibe thanks to an actual emphasis on the hero's detective abilities for once, and big name stars like John Turturro and Colin Farrell who are so dedicated to their roles they become unrecognizable in the best way. It's an altogether unique, original vision for a long-standing property that we've seen in countless forms over the years and therefore really needed something fresh like this to garner any interest at all these days. My enjoyment of it was very limited however by a director who, while having some novel ideas, is trying way too hard. Too hard at what you ask? Quite simply, breaking away from the established superhero blockbuster norms and creating a deeper, more thoughtful and complex experience. A task which, to put it bluntly, appears to be out of Matt Reeves' depth. A fact that's extremely evident in the numerous baffling artistic and stylistic choices. Such as how he tries to mine tension and atmosphere from a scene by having his actors take an ETERNITY to walk across a room. Don't even get me started on the intentional blurring of moments where bright red colors are used or how you can't really make out anything happening in the overlong car chase due to the heavy rain effects and excessive number of interior vehicle shots. The overall vibe they were going for here was that of a gritty, grim psychological thriller that brought to my mind hints of films I've seen like Prisoners and I Saw the Devil, where almost everyone is seriously unhinged or deranged. That proves a bar this fails to clear. Reeves and crew seem painfully unaware of how goofy the material they're working with can be. I was often left laughing at the attempts that were made to make Robert Pattinson and Paul Dano look odd and "damaged" when I should have been shaken because of how unintentionally corny they came off. The later of the two may even be guilty of overacting. This is rather embarrassing when you consider that so much of The Batman forsakes traditional action and humor with the hopes of achieving this effect, whereas Tim Burton did a far better job of reaching that goal while actively embracing them. There are many aspects of this movie that I respect and as it so happens also liked. The most notable being Zoë Kravitz who is just absolute SEX slinking around onscreen. Admirable in intent the vision may be though, the execution feels unjustifiably pretentious and desperately needed a more serious editor to trim a greater amount of the content down. Ultimately resulting in a feature that misses the mark, with me at least, by a wide margin.