A CLASSIC 'BATMAN'

By Hal Lipper

From St. Petersburg Times, 06.23.1989

BATMAN Cast: Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, Jack Nicholson, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Billy Dee Williams, Michael Gough, Jack Palance Director: Tim Burton Screenplay: Sam Hamm, Warren Skaaren, based on a story by Sam Hamm Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity Running Time: 130 minutes

There's trouble in Gotham City. Distraught heroes and gleefully disturbed villains. Together, they give Batman its engagingly complex and sinister edge.

Batman is comic-book mayhem come to life. It's simultaneously real and surreal, overwhelming the senses as it plunges to psychodramatic depths devised by director Tim Burton and screenwriters Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren.

This is not a campy send-up of Bob Kane's Caped Crusader like the cartoony pop-kitsch '60s TV show. Batman is a throwback to Kane's 50-year-old vision of a hero obsessed with avenging the shooting death of his parents. Also gone with the TV series' self-parodying WHIZ-BAM-POW banter is Robin, the Boy Wonder, who was a latecomer to Kane's comics.

In Burton's version, philanthropist-socialite Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) fights crime as Batman to cope with the festering anger he feels for his parents' murder. His heroic deeds feed his obsession.

Photojournalist Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) has her own compulsions.

She pursues Wayne relentlessly even though he stiffens at any suggestion of commitment.

The Joker (Jack Nicholson) may be the happiest of this maladjusted trio. He wants to destroy Gotham City for the same reason people climb mountains. Because it's there.

The most interesting element in Batman is its setting, a cityscape of post-modern decay. Batman exists in an ominous '20s-through-'80s metropolis reminiscent of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. It's a dank landscape of towering smokestacks, art deco facades and crowded streets. The stench of smog and grit practically wafts from the screen.

Burton heaps tons of texture on a storyline that actually is comic-strip thin. The Joker, his face melted into a permanent smile from a fall into a vat of toxic chemicals, exacts his revenge on Gotham City by stocking its store shelves with tainted cosmetics.

Nicholson is supremely despotic as "the world's first fully functioning homicidal maniac." He prances and disco dances--his goon squad in step by his side--as he wrenches control of Gotham's criminal underworld. Batman's finest moments belong to Nicholson, whose manic Joker invades the Flugelheim Museum to spray-paint Renoirs and Rembrandts and court Vicki Vail, who had been expecting Bruce Wayne.

Keaton's Batman is stoic, almost mechanical. When he sheds his armor, the emotional barrier remains. There isn't much shading to Keaton's superhero. That's the point. His psyche is scarred almost beyond repair. He's a vacuum, in danger of imploding. It is a riveting, understated performance.

Basinger projects an appealing softness that ultimately is mitigated by her grating scream. She is wonderful at the film's beginning; less so as the Joker's hostage toward the picture's end.

The true star of Batman is not its actors but production designer Anton Furst, costume designer Bob Ringwood and cinematographer Roger Pratt. Gotham City, its inhabitants' retro-chic clothing, the shark-nosed Batmobile and its ominous Batcave give the picture a sense of otherworldliness.

Burton, the director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, is the master of atmosphere. In Batman, he creates a parallel universe.

His Gotham City theater district, city hall and museum--and its sense of moral decay--all recall today's New York.

His pacing is relentless. Batman threatens to become the thrill-a-minute successor to Indiana Jones.

Burton also recognizes the importance of quiet moments in an adventure. They allow characters to reflect upon events, and they give audiences a chance to catch their breath.

Some of Batman's best scenes are devoid of action: Vicki Vale and reporter Alex Knox (Robert Wuhl) deriding Bruce Wayne after finding his collection of armor; Vale and Wayne dining with Alfred the butler (Michael Gough) in the Wayne mansion's kitchen.

Throughout, Burton demonstrates a pleasantly twisted sense of humor. His television commentators look increasingly ratty as Gotham City's fear of cosmetics spreads. One of the Joker's chemically dispatched adversaries shrivels into a mummified corpse reminiscent of the ghouls in Beetlejuice.

Batman is perfect summertime fare. Its secret is levity hidden in a dark and troubled soul.