Having never taken to the trio of Christopher Nolan Batman films, or most of his movies, I wanted the new Robert Pattinson Batman movie, named, in a stunning bit originality, The Batman, to impress me.
Ugh. It tried too hard to present Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne as tortured and broody, instead he just came across as a misanthropic, often po-faced, rich gobshite that you didn’t want to root for. The grimy aesthetic was laid on a tad too thick that it became a pastiche of movies that did it well – say Taxi Driver. Not even Zoe Kravitz’s skin-tight outfit could save what was an incredibly dull affair.
As with most episodic based comic book adaptations the narrative’s scope was ill-fitting for the big screen. Even at almost three hours in length, The Batman was an unseemly mess of things just happening abruptly or nothing happening at all, akin to the stages of a suicidally obese person trying to cram themselves into sportscar. At least Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin was so dreadful you could laugh at it. Thankfully Batman: The Animated Series is still around and in the Batman genre it has yet to be bettered.
But among the wreckage of The Batman Colin Farrell’s turn as The Penguin was worth salvaging. Eventually marginalised by the main antagonist, The Riddler, in the film, at least Lauren LeFranc recognised Farrell’s performance deserved closer examination and developed a mini-series charting The Penguin’s attempts to work his way up the Mafioso food chain to kingpin. It’s a low bar to clear, but this was always likely to be far more interesting than Bruce Wayne deliberating whether he can face leaving his mansion on a Tuesday.
Watching this mini-series, it occurred to me that some actors could use assistance to embrace the method and that Farrell is surely one of them. I had no idea Farrell was playing the Penguin during The Batman. In fact, I was left completely perplexed as to when he was going to appear. This is closest The Batman got to suspense, was Farrell The Riddler? Until about halfway through I needed to go to the loo (did I mention The Batman’s long?), and while there checked the cast list on Wikipedia.
I’ll admit this notion of Farrell’s range being limited owes to his movie career having more turkeys than Christmas. His track record of playing American characters is particularly grim. Lowlights include Widows, that movie he did with Denzel where Denzel borrowed Samuel L Jackson’s afro from Unbreakable, and sadly it’s impossible to forget the massive abortions that were the Total Recall and Miami Vice remakes. Little doubt I’m being harsh here, most top Hollywood actors simply get offered too much money to not make too many forgettable movies.
Farrell has fared better in Martin McDonagh’s flicks, often playing a cocksure Irishman; The Banshees of Inisherin, Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges. The Lobster was quirky, and The Gentlemen, while typical Guy Ritchie gangster fare, was amusing. But even here there are blights on Farrell’s resume, the laughably bad Alexander, though Val Kilmer doing an Irish accent is an event, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Quick rant – The Killing of a Sacred Deer is one of the worst movies to be released in the last decade. It’s a cynical concoction of edgy situationism by a wanker art student trying to impress their mates. The agonisingly slow pacing, absurd premise, robotic dialogue and every character appearing to be on a cocktail of temazepam and ketamine was exasperating. That most of the main characters survived at the end was the decomposing cherry on top of this stinking turd.
Anyway, I’ve strayed from the Lede here. The Penguin as a mini-series allows for a comprehensive vision of The Batman’s world. HBO doesn’t insist on sanitized language where a mainstream superhero movie does to maximize its audience and profitability. There’s also no linear hero arc to squeeze into a truncated timespan. The Penguin follows cliques of venal Machiavellian scum or crazed lunatics trying to outflank one another, headlined by the insane Sofia Falcone, who perpetually teeters on the edge of going full Hannibal Lecter. Placing The Penguin among this lot doesn’t make you root for him as an anti-hero, but the context does help you accept his predicament, and it provides genuine twists.
This iteration of The Penguin is so effective because it’s faithful to the character’s legend, he is grotesque, but crucially, unlike Danny DeVito’s version, not comically. Oz Cobb became The Penguin by being weathered by years of violence and physical ailments. The design of his face, think Tony Soprano, only fucked up, displays this history – a meticulous and extensive curation of pothole hole sized acne scars and chibs. It’s rougher than a binman’s arse – as though he’s been reversed over by a road grinder several times. The body girth is that of a slovenly hedonist, mixed with an increasing lack of strenuous physical activity limited by a gnarly clubbed foot.
Existing under all that rubber and putting on hours of slap every day was surely humbling, to a degree, for a handsome dude like Farrell. But it’s also clear that this commitment to the part created a kindship with the character, as though the costume took possession over Farrell, cajoling him to elevate his performance to match the audacity and detail of the phenotype (another great example of this is Robert Downey Jr’s ironic “blackface” in Tropic Thunder). We know this as most of the physical inflections of Farrell’s performance is not as a direct result of the makeup itself – the impeccably thick New York accent, inadvertent shoulder flexes, facial tics and tongue flicks and the signature waddling gait.
There were many problems with The Batman, but one of its worst is it put Pattinson, who was supposed to take centre stage, at a real disadvantage. He was only given a mediocre script and tired concept, where Farrell had the task of physically becoming someone else. Credit to him, he rose to it. This juxtaposition is a good reminder of the performance paradox – people are more capable than you imagine but that testing them is often the only way to reveal it.
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