Pattinson's moody, broody 'Batman' trades comic book pretense for classic film-noir crime and grime

“The Batman” - ★ ★ ★ ½

Matt Reeves' oh-so-serious “The Batman” presents a fresh, complex and inventively retooled entry in a long and crowded superhero franchise mostly dominated by supervillains far more interesting than its titular hero.

Here, we get a Batman movie without a powerful, quirky antagonist constantly overshadowing the Dark Knight and his alter-ego, Gotham City zillionaire Bruce Wayne, played by a gaunt, scarred and haunted Robert Pattinson who looks as if he just auditioned to star in “The Crow Returns.”

Rather than rehash the origin tale (which is briefly alluded to), the story picks up with a bruised and battered Wayne already on Batman patrol for a couple of years, struggling to save his city, betrayed by its greedy leaders in a cesspool of corruption, terror, crime and grime.

When someone murders the mayor of Gotham City in a most heinous fashion, Wayne dons cape and cowl to answer the call to duty from police ally Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright, challenging Pattinson to a Best Gnarliest Voice contest.)

A quietly scary, paramilitary-garbed Paul Dano plays the Riddler, not as the flamboyant goofball popularized by Jim Carrey and Frank Gorshin, but as a studious, sadistic sociopath who's apparently seen the movies “Saw” and “Seven” too many times based on how he constructs horrible, elaborate mechanisms to murder those he holds accountable for preying on Gotham City.

As the corpse count climbs, Batman gets to do something he's never quite done in earlier movies: be an actual detective. (The world first met Batman in Detective Comics during the 1930s.)

At the scene of his every crime, Riddler leaves a cryptic riddle addressed to The Batman scribbled in a bizarre, childlike font. “Mr. Batman: I gave you all the clues,” he writes with sneering politeness.

This Caped Crusader may be Robin-less, but he retains the crucial services of his confidant, butler and Bat Cave manager Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis).

And Wayne bonds with a kindred spirit in nightclub waitress Selina Kyle (a dynamically svelte Zoe Kravitz), whose slick and slinky Catwoman seeks to punish those men of power who murdered her best friend.

And, unlike Batman, she's unencumbered by any no-kill policy.

But why hint at the sexual chemistry between Bat and Cat when this movie has no interest in following up this crossbred romance? A couple of gratuitous lip locks and, tick, tick, boom! It's over.

Likewise, an unrecognizable Colin Farrell becomes a wasted asset as the underutilized criminal underling called the Penguin. He's all made up with nothing to do.

Meanwhile, John Turturro's wizened, subtly threatening gangster boss Carmine Falcone seems to be satisfied lurking around the periphery of the plot. Until he isn't.

Reeves, whose impressive resume includes the low-budget “Cloverfield” plus two expensive “Planet of the Apes” sequels (“Dawn of” and “War for”), produced and co-wrote this engaging study in ethics and morality that has just enough humor to keep the creeping gloom and doom at bay.

“Hey, you with Zorro here?” a sarcastic Gotham cop says to Gordon, while he's standing next to Batman.

Reeves has less success keeping the violence and perversions corralled in a PG-13 pen.

“The Batman” justifiably yearns to be an R-rated experience, but marketing pressures trump artistic choices, so its frequent cutaways to off-screen acts of cruelty seem jarringly coy, especially for audiences used to popular adults-only fare such as “Game of Thrones” and “Gangs of London.”

Only near the end of this nearly three-hour, bleak and rainy, neo-noiry thriller does the utterance of Jesus Christ's name - casually tossed out as a swear - take on unexpected significance.

That happens when the damaged Dark Knight's classic film noir voice-over tells us how much the terrorized citizens of a besieged Gotham City need hope, and they must know that someone out there can fight for them.

“I ... have ... to ... try,” the Caped Crusader growls in a gravely voice pitted by exhaustion and disillusionment.

That's as far as Reeves' virulent vigilante vengeance tale takes the savior metaphor - wisely leaving its ultimate exploitation to his DC Comics counterpart in 2006's “Superman Returns.”

Even so, this moody, broody Batman seems to be more vociferously anti-gun and anti-capital-punishment than in his numerous previous incarnations.

Pattinson, whose vampire from the “Twilight” movies no doubt informed his protagonist here (although, unlike Dracula, he never transformed into a bat), projects an earnest sense of sacrifice and atonement for the sins of his father, and the people who murdered him.

Here, in this shadowy septic tank of vermin and vipers, the flawed and tormented Bruce Wayne turns out to be the closest thing to Ted Lasso that Gotham City has to offer.

As a chief character shrewdly observes: “God loves a comeback story.”

Nothing Jesus about that ...

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Jeffrey Wright, Zoey Kravitz, Paul Dano, John Turturro

Directed by: Matt Reeves

Other: A Warner Bros. release. In theaters. Rated PG-13 for drug use, language, suggestive scenes, violence. 176 minutes