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​The China Chef Buffet on 67 Bullsboro Drive failed its health inspection August 9.

After the Trinity Christian Lady Lions took a 7-0 lead after five innings, there was little thought that the game would end in a walk-off.

“The Batman” aims for a gritty, mature pathos and achieves that lofty goal.

Review by Jonathan W. Hickman Be in the know the moment news happens Subscribe to Daily and Breaking News Alerts Email Address

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“The Batman” works primarily as an angst-driven, noirish detective story. It's a knockout when it focuses on the grim, provocative mystery, but the superhero elements get in the way.

After eight decades of Batman, little about the cowl-adorned character isn’t already widely known. Through the years, the best iteration is Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” and the worst installment is Joel Schumacher’s “Batman & Robin.”

What’s been essential to the Batman experience is a good villain and a subtle helping of camp. Overplaying the joke (he’s a man in a bat costume, after all) spoils the sauce, as Schumacher discovered when putting a badly miscast George Clooney in a batsuit that featured very prominent rubber nipples. How could anyone take that guy seriously? Well, arguably, “Batman & Robin” made no effort at dramatic pathos, also failing to register intentional laughs.

While Nolan played his trilogy with a deathly serious vibe, his villains worked in potent dark humor. The late Heath Ledger posthumously won an Oscar by delivering endlessly quotable dialogue, namely questioning, rhetorically, “why so serious?” It produced uncomfortable laughs to release the tension.

And after dispatching a crime boss, Ledger’s demented clown casually allows underlings to join the “small” organization that he promised had room for “aggressive expansion.” His tormented, aggressive Joker was a twisted and funny (as in disturbed) sort of businessman. And the mystery of his origin went unanswered perhaps until director Todd Phillips put his Oscar-winning mark on the character in 2019’s unusual blockbuster “Joker” with Joaquin Phoenix in the lead. For an actor in this franchise, it’s good to be bad.

In “The Batman,” we’re given a trio of villains, none of which can capture the ferocity of Ledger’s seriocomic bad guy or the sympathetic mania that Phoenix portrayed. But that’s okay because director Matt Reeves (see the “Planet of the Apes” franchise) and actor Robert Pattinson (perhaps, best known for playing a vampire in the “Twilight” films) give us a memorable and, dare I say, likable Batman.

This caped crusader is young, tortured, and frightening in a way that the character has never been.

“I’m vengeance,” Batman proclaims after mercilessly beating up a street gang member. His weighted glove-fisted punches break bone, teeth, leaving behind a bloody pulp. It’s a shocking bit of ultraviolence that introduces the schizophrenic inner hero that lurks within the rail-thin billionaire orphan Bruce Wayne.

Pattinson capably plays both a timid, damaged, immature soul in plain clothes and a stoic nocturnal creature of viciousness when heavily armored. These two halves couldn’t be more dissimilar. And both are profoundly engaging for different reasons.

But when a series of nasty murders plague the elite of Gotham City, the murderer reaches out directly to Batman. Stumped by the complex ciphers the killer leaves at the crime scenes, Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) seeks the help of the city’s dark crime fighter. What’s interesting isn’t that Gordon needs the extra muscle; he enlists the Bat for his brain.

Naturally, bringing in a vigilante doesn’t sit well with his fellow officers, most of whom are on the take. And Commissioner Pete Savage (Alex Ferns) loudly denounces Gordon’s decision. But because the high-profile murder needs to be quickly solved, the Commissioner has no choice but to let Gordon and his towering partner do their investigation.

In the investigation, Batman endears himself with viewers and begrudgingly gains the respect of some members of the police force. Sure, he’s intimidating in his elevated Austrian army boots reinforced with armored skin guards, but his intellectual prowess is equally impressive.

Gordon, unfortunately, comes off as an idealistic simpleton, at times playing the grounded, practical Watson to Batman’s impulsive Sherlock. But Gordon’s a unicorn in the city, the one guy who goes by the book. And the reason this works is that he’s surrounded by so much corruption and villainy that his pure heart shines brightly. This approach isn’t unique, dating back to the works of detective novelist Dashiell Hammett, who painted an eerily similar picture in 1929 with the influential book “Red Harvest.”

And building on the familiar crime noir visual scope, this production is so dark, so foreboding that the rain that drenches everything is hardly noticeable. Everyone is rotten or rotting from the inside. Somehow the awful feeling of dread doesn’t weigh the narrative down or become too preachy until the film’s closing segment.

If there is a weakness to “The Batman” it is the need to go big when it ought to stay small and focused. There’s an entirely unnecessary car chase in which the new hotrod Batmobile races around a jackknifed tractor-trailer and exploding vehicles. This scene is the kind of sequence Zack Snyder fans will embrace, but true believers in the Batman character might dismiss it as a throwaway dalliance.

When the frustrating mystery is revealed, the action gets even more prominent. These big action set pieces are expected but add little to the film. One shot toward the end does deliver an emotional gut-punch moment that should be impactful, especially in light of the events transpiring in Ukraine. But the detective Batman is far better than the superhero one.

The critical villain, the Riddler (played by “There Will Be Blood” star Paul Dano), is a confusing contradiction. Since the Joker (either the one inhabited by Ledger or Phoenix) is the high-water mark in Batman adversaries, it’s asking a lot for this film to give us anything that meets that superior standard. Dano is good in the role, but his origins are hard to reconcile. Here we have a hero rich kid taking on a penniless weirdo.

The Penguin (played by Colin Farrell hidden under mounds of seamless prosthetics) offers a more traditional baddy. His capitalistic nature explains his motivations thoroughly. And the Penguin’s upfront criminality is treated as part of the Hammett-inspired scenery. He’s a middle-aged mob boss tolerated by the authorities to keep the city’s delicate balance. This unholy alliance is the way of things in Gotham.

Smartly, Reeves, working from a script he wrote with Peter Craig (see “The Town,” and “Bad Boys for Life”), gives us a kind of romantic foil in Selina Kyle or Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz). Kyle isn’t some indestructible superwoman. Instead, she comes off as an athletic, street-savvy person who knows how to take care of herself. And Kravitz is, arguably, the best Catwoman since Michelle Pfeiffer said “meow” in Tim Burton’s remarkably good 1992 sequel “Batman Returns.”

“The Batman” makes a fitting follow-up to “Joker.” Unlike “Joker’s” morose, dreary nihilism, “The Batman” leaves viewers with hope. Its more conventional approach will make it a crowd-pleaser, although Reeves’ need to give viewers a slam-bang conclusion somewhat undercuts the gritty drama of the film’s first half.

And like “Joker,” “The Batman” is undeniably about the title character, and despite serviceable villains, the movie makes us appreciate the complexity of Bruce Wayne and his dark half. This hero-focused narrative makes “The Batman” the first in the franchise where the villains are secondary and less vital to the effectiveness of the picture.

Let’s hope that the future trajectory of this version of the comic book material stays committed to the detective story and only flirts with the superhero essentials.

If you want world-ending battles and magical powers that confront other-worldly forces, the next “Spider-Man” installment will no doubt fit that bill. But “The Batman” aims for a gritty, mature pathos and achieves that lofty goal.

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