Review: 'Batman: Gotham Knight'

Four Stars

Studio:  Warner Bros.

Length:  75 minutes

MSRP:  $29.98

Release Date: July 8th, 2008

Creators (partial): Shojiro Nishimi, Yasuhiro Aoki, Brian Azzarello, Josh Olson

Format: 2-Disc, widescreen anamorphic transfer

Age Rating: PG 13

ICv2 Stars: 4 Stars (ICv2 uses a five star quality rating system)

This animated anthology includes six short films, set between the end of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, written by a team of top U.S. comic and script writers, including Brian Azzarello, Josh Olson, David Goyer, Greg Rucka, Jordan Goldberg and Alan Bennett, and animated by some of Japan's top anime studios including Studio 4C, Production I.G., Madhouse, and Bee Train. 

Warner Bros.' concept was to produce an anthology film like the highly successful Animatrix that would help bridge the gap between films while adding important backstory elements, and like the Animatrix, Batman: Gotham Knight is likely to be the most popular anime release of the year.  All six segments of BGK are interesting and should please fans of the Caped Crusader and appeal to anime fans as well. 

The first segment, "Have I Got a Story For You" will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen Tekkonkinkreet as the work of Studio 4C with its superb use of color, its gritty urban backgrounds and stylized skateboarding teens.  Batman fans might be put off by apparent breeches in the "Dark Knight Canon" until it becomes clear that the kids are just making these stories up (at least until the end).  Studio 4C's other effort, "Working Through the Pain," crosscuts effectively between a wounded Batman in the sewers of Gotham and flashbacks to his pain-enduring training as a young man in India. 

The two Madhouse-animated sequences, "In Darkness Dwells," which features a major clash with The Scarecrow conducted in the maze of sewers under the streets of Gotham, and "Dead Shot," which features a super assassin who fires from moving vehicles, are more conventional than the Studio 4C efforts, but they really deliver the goods in terms of atmosphere and action. 

So does Production I.G.'s segment, "Crossfire," which was scripted by Greg Rucka and features a battle between Russian and Italian mobs (the prevalence of the Russian mob in a number of the stories could indicate that that organization will be a player in The Dark Knight). 

Bee Train's entry, "Field Test" appears to be the most conventional entry, but the ingenious story by Jordan Goldberg reveals Batman to be much more than just a heartless vigilante. 

Batman: Gotham Knight is rated PG 13 and it definitely amps up the violence and the urban grit from the Batman Saturday morning cartoons, but in spite of some spectacularly violent shots including a brilliant bullet cam effort in "Dead Shot," the film is not excessively bloody (though the body count is high).  The two-disc edition contains lots of great extras including features on Batman creator Bob Kane, Batman villains, and four episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.

-Tom Flinn

This review is a longer version of a review that appears in ICv2 Guide #57:  Anime/Manga.