Like Spiderman, Batman is ubiquitous. And, like the web-slinger, he has been victimized by uneven, and sometimes dreadful, attempts to squeeze another coin from the comic book cow. Yet both characters, when placed in the right hands, can yield compelling stories. Spiderman 2 and The Dark Knight are among the best of their genre. The Batman nearly joins their company. Visually compelling, narratively interesting, and full of excellent performances, The Batman is worth (almost all) your time.

The story pits Batman (Robert Pattinson) against The Riddler (Paul Dano). Gotham’s elite are being cut down in gruesome, performative ways to highlight their corruption. Deliberate clues are left to guide Batman toward his adversary. Caught up in the fray is Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), a waitress deep in the bowels of a night club that doubles as a hub for organized crime. Batman forms mostly durable alliances with Kyle’s Catwoman and Lt. Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) as he tightropes between the law and the underworld, which is controlled by Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and Oz (Colin Farrell). In the background is a political campaign, where an insurgent candidate, Bella Reál (Jayme Lawson), challenges Gotham’s endless and empty promise of renewal.

The Batman is unusual given its predecessors. There is very little Bruce Wayne or Alfred the Butler (Andy Serkis), and Wayne Manor is only glimpsed. Robert Pattinson spends most of the film in the mask, and not much of that is fighting. Batman instead broods over crime scenes, labors with ciphers, and hunkers in the dark to watch friends and foes. He is more Sherlock Holmes than Incredible Hulk. It is a welcome change that made, in some ways, The Batman a good movie apart from the nature of Batman himself.

Matt Reeves, the director, brings a fully realized vision to the screen, which is not a surprise. Reeves helmed the excellent War of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and The Batman will only strengthen his résumé. The grit onscreen comes from more than the setting. Reeves washed his digital feed through film to lend The Batman a cinematic patina that works. Of course, The Batman is dark, it’s Batman. It is also rainy and hard. The overcast skies affect the tone and manifest the essential theme of the film. In ethics investigations, it is often said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Those in power curtain their corridors and must be wrestled into the light. Transparency can only happen with illumination and then projection. In Gotham, there is no sunlight until the beginning of the third act, when we see the struggle between morning and midnight. The orange and gray hues signal the inauguration of a new day that is here, but not yet in its fully realized form. In The Batman‘s simple eschatology, the coming savior is the Caped Crusader who, like the Lord, brings vengeance.

It is possible to go too far with comparisons, but some feel relevant here. The Batman owes little to other superhero movies, and more to film noir, where the detective stands against a rotten system on behalf of a beautiful woman with nowhere else to go. Her feelings for him could be a tool of manipulation, or they could be shoots of hope, the possibility of a different life. The Batman also suffocates with its setting. In Blade Runner, the city, the people, and the structures–both physical and institutional–were crumbling shadows cast not by the sun, but garish advertisements separating fools from money. In this way, Gotham feels more like the Times Square of the 1970s–somewhere you scurry through, keeping one hand on your wallet and two fearful eyes on your surroundings.

For all its considerable strengths, the fundamental weakness of The Batman is the length (2 hours and 55 minutes). Long films are sometimes necessary. A Hidden Life is 2 hours and 54 minutes, and Lawrence of Arabia was 3 hours and 38 minutes. Both films are remarkable, and I am not sure I would change a thing about them. Both were character studies, and the time was essential to explaining the transformations taking place. Had The Batman devoted more time to the evolution of Bruce Wayne, or by investigating Selina Kyle’s motivations in a meaningful way, it may have warranted the extra minutes. Or, maybe most effectively, The Riddler could have been introduced more overtly earlier in the film, which would have allowed for the antagonism between hero and villain to develop organically. Instead, the middle third of the film gets bogged in subplots that did not contribute enough to the end product.

Batman is always political to a degree. Gotham is corrupt and justice is denied, and Batman must work with the select “good guys” to root out the bad guys, both inside and outside the government. The same theme is present here, but with some twists. Selina Kyle at one point injects race into her critique of Gotham, claiming white men are at the top of the pyramid. Bella Reál, like Kyle, is an African American, which gives her lamentation a bit more sting. While some might claim The Batman suffers from this, or is “woke” as a result, they are overstating their case. There are other, deeper messages in the film.

SPOILERS***The Riddler creates a small, but fervent online following. He eventually calls them to arms, and they oblige. They show up, when requested, clad in costumes to match the Riddler’s videos. The virtual world has a community for everyone. No matter your thing, someone, somewhere shares it, whether that is evil and destructive, or healthy and healing. These groups provide their own form of social capital. Powerful bonds are forged and networks provide significant benefits. This is part of the great blessing and curse of the social media world. The alienated find succor, but sometimes in places that multiply malignancy. Outlandish grievances are nursed and conspiracies are hatched. The Riddler’s 500 followers fell short of his goals, but what if he’d had 5,000, or 50,000, or 500,000?

Our founders worried of factions, groups of varying size, formed on impulse or interest, bent on the destruction of rights or at least opposed to the public good. Liberty, Madison tells us, is the essential ingredient of factions, for free people can meet, talk, and form groups, whether they be quilting bees or death cults. The internet amplifies that freedom in uncomfortable ways. Warhol said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Maybe more accurately, given our platforms, now everyone can get at least 500 followers. That should inspire and terrify us.