The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 138

WEEKEND Holy blockbuster Batman! great! It Nicholson Keaton soar to new heights By RYAN MURPHY Herald Writer Batman the movie event of the summer is a psycho thriller posing as an action-adventure movie a breathtaking ride through a fun-house populated with all-too-believ-able ghouls phantoms and tortured souls The inherent premise of the $60 million movie is a risky one: Here is a film in which the hero is as troubled as warped as the villain In the dark bleak Batman the good guy is no knight in shining armor Unlike Superman another comic-book legend-turned-cinema superstar Batman does not walk on water He treads the tightrope of insanity Early on he corners his prey scares them senseless with his ominous silhouette and thus satisfies his tormented soul His nocturnal forays become the talk of Gotham City Obviously a mortal beneath the Batsuit a man driven by incredible demons Batman the movie is a project that has been tinkered with since 1979 when producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters purchased the rights to the mythical Caped Crusader created by Bob Kane in the late 1930s The problem right away was tone Should the movie be as light and frothy as the campy 1966-68 ABC series or self-important like the Su-' perman movies? Director Tim Burton Beetlejuice and Big Adventure) chose another tack nomination for his bravura turn as the Joker GET THE OSCAR READY: Jack gry of mind is a comic-book Bern-hard Goetz a confused man catapulted to the forefront of vigilantism thoughtful demeanor makes us empathize with this strange man And Gotham City is nothing if not a metaphor for modern major cities caught in the cross fire of crime Strangely wonderfully Burton has made a cathartic revisionist comic book of a movie for adults that is a sendup of the state of the Union meat in this film And lots of fun too The chief proponent of the merriment is Jack Nicholson who in the casting coup of the decade plays nemesis the Joker Doughy of face and leering of grin the Joker is an icon of maliciousness a psychotic dandy determined to rule Gotham He start out this horrifying A small-time thug named Jack Napier he is transformed into the Joker one night when Batman heaves him into a vat of acid He miraculously emerges from the gooj with Kool-Aid green hair and a toxic mind The permanently tortured grin comes compliments of a back-alley surgeon The despicable sition and warped perspective Nicholson is a shoo-in for another MOVIE REVIEW BATMAN (PG-13) Cast: Jack Nicholson Michael Keaton Kim Basinger Robert Wuhl Pat Hingle Billy Dee Williams Michael Gough Jack Palance Director: Tim Burton Producers: Jon Peters and Peter Guber Screenwriters: Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren Cinematographer: Roger Pratt A Warner Bros release Running time: 130 minutes Profanity violence blames on Batman and it is Batman says the Joker who must pay for what he has done And away the Joker goes lacing grooming products with the chemical Smylex (which brings death) and courting love interest photojoumalist Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) Batman is not amused and they battle for control of Gotham City The most memorable aspect of Batman is the attention to florid detail At times strange touches upstage the simple good-vs-evil parable (The opening sequence a slow Stanley Keaton is a good choice no a great choice for the role of the Caped Crusader He is a steady captain an actor capable of steering the film toward quiet reason when things get too explosive And he holds his own against Nicholson know who you he says with unbelievable ferocity to the Joker at one point and Nicholson actually blanches The flaws are slight and easy to live with Producers Guber and Peters have lassoed a few songs from Prince for obvious commercial reasons but the Purple synthetic numbers are at great odds with Danny lush stirring score Additionally the supporting players except for Basinger are underused Her elegant composure overrides some of the jarring scenes particularly when Vicki learns that Bruce Wayne is Batman The real third star is director Burton With the help of production designer Anton Furst he has created a hypnotic world where 1930s style collides with sensibilities In this only his third film Burton has painted a portrait not in his customary bright colors hut in purple brown and black lots of black These are the colors of the celluloid masterpiece Kubrick crawl through a maze of hairpin curves that eventually becomes a highly identifiable symbol sets the tone for the inventive mayhem to come) Batman is essentially a two-man character study Burton plops Batman and the Joker down against some amazing backdrops and draws delicious performances from his two stars Nicholson is in rare form in a performance destined to be widely celebrated His Ultra Bright smile and histrionics are even more dazzling than usual The only thing wrong with performance which will probably win him yet another Oscar nomination is that he is too much fun Many times you feel yourself silently cheering for manchild-turned-pathetic villain Later escapades in the script restore the proper balance Surprising Keaton The biggest surprise in a film that has many however has to be the restrained multidimensional performance by Keaton Batman as Burton conceived him is not a showy role The torment of the character would have to be simply mirrored in eyes if the performance was to be a success and it is Troubled avenger His vision of Batman was inspired by the four-part 1986 comic-book series The Dark Knight Returns which cast Batman as a troubled avenger of the night This Burton realized was what the Batman of the 1990s was all about The crux of initial man tale (this is the first in a planned trilogy) attempts to answer the question: Why would Bruce Wayne an outwardly smooth billionaire dress up like a bat at night and smash heads together in back alleys? The riddle is solved through flashbacks: Wayne we learn is a man whose life is founded on terrible irony He inherited his money and position as a young boy after he watched his wealthy parents be shot down by robbers His adulthood goal: to avenge their deaths and all other senseless crimes of the night Money bought the bulletproof Batsuit memory fuels the mission Confused vigilante As bleak as the silent classic Metropolis and just as stylized Batman is a topical feast Michael Batman puny of muscle yet an- the miami Herald Friday june23 1989.