This movie had me bricked up!

Tried to stay awake 2 hours in.

The Batman wants so badly to be hard boiled, to be “a vibe,” but it attempts to squeeze in so much that it feels frantic.

The reality is that there is probably nothing truly novel to be done with Batman at this point. He’s been thoroughly mined for both fun and pathos; try as Reeves and his co-screenwriter Peter Craig might, they can’t squeeze much higher-meaning blood out of a fatally depleted stone. Pattinson, moody and saturnine, does what he can, but he’s not afforded much beyond growling and scowling.

The Batman isn’t revolutionary. It doesn’t upend the superhero movie dynamic. Heck, people used to the recent superhero movies getting more cosmic and playing around with alternate timelines might not even like this more back to basics approach. But I, for one, found it refreshing. A nice little breather amidst the chaos. And proof that a good story with good characters can go quite a long way.