City of Scars

Perhaps this is the truest Batman film ever made. There is a perfect representation of Batman: the costume according to the comics (no armor! Batman needs mobility), the good acting of Kevin Porter, the dark atmosphere, the superhero as both a martial artist and a skilled detective... Showing the intimacy of the Joker was also astonishing. Besides that, it was also extremely nice to see bat-villains and other characters who have never appeared in any of Batman's feature length movies. Why did we need an independent low-budget short film to have a dark knight similar to the comics? Why the big producers never do that? I prefer "City of Scars" than the more famous (and also nice) "Batman: Dead End".

Batman is on the hunt for the Joker who has once again broken out of Arkham Asylum.

In contrast with his origins a young boys parents have been murdered by the clown prince but in this case the child has been kindapped as well.

Can the caped crusader get to him in time?

Along the way our hero will also come across The Ventriloquist and Victor Zsasz, but sadly they can't bring any excitment to this 30 minute snorefest.

Though everything looks decent enough and the effort was there sadly the writing was not and at the end of the 30 minutes the film ends on a huge anti-climax.

One for hardcore Batman fans only.

The Good:

Looks the part

The Bad:

Bad representation of Zsasz

Fight scenes are pants

Very dull Joker

Terrible ending

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Boring monologues are great ways to end stories

A child's parents are brutally murdered, similar to what happened to Batman. The man behind it is the recently escaped Joker, who, along with Harley Quinn, are treated to one of their most hauntingly creepy depictions ever, and not only of this medium(counting The Dark Knight). Best moment of it? He's sitting by a mirror, we don't see his face, and he is mumbling incoherently to himself. You gotta see it to believe how effective it is(and note that this is currently available on YouTube). The performances in general are great, with only brief exceptions. Bruce Wayne's alter ego has a rock-hard face and a spot-on voice(see, Bale? This is how it's done), and his narrations has him questioning if he's doing the right thing, something too many fan films forget. Unfortunately, those portions do suffer from occasional uninspired writing and bad reads. On the whole, the script is marvelous, if I can't for the life of me make sense of the moral(best I can tell, it's frankly a complete betrayal of the canon of the hero, and I can never stand that, if you want something different, make a new one, don't change something established to fit what you want if it goes directly against it), and the ending is, as someone in this notes, anti-climactic. The production values are quite high, with several large locations(a carnival, and a totally absolutely in no way not at all utterly gratuitous strip club with tons of cleavage, skin and butt shots), dozens of extras, and nearly flawless cinematography, make-up, props(the one obvious thing is the grappling gun, which might as well be neon colored), filming, editing and lighting. Action is sparse(I'd call this a thriller, genre-wise), well-choreographed, swift and really hits the mark(the hand-held camera is arguably excessive). The tone is relentlessly bleak throughout. There is a lot of disturbing content and a little bloody violence in this. I recommend this to comic book readers, as it will satisfy many of them(and it includes a few more well-known characters from there than it needed(I'm not sure Black Canary is even identified in it, though I know who was supposed to be her), without any of them being out of place, forced in or poor adaptations of the source material(suits, personalities and basic appearances)). 7/10

Being a fan of the Batman films and cartoons since I was a boy, I was happy to find a new chapter in the on-going saga. There is no sense comparing this to Nolan's work, or indeed any of the films, and it has a very different feel to the cartoons. So where does it fit in?

This short piece (and one of my biggest disappointments is that the end credits filled 6 of the 30 minutes of the feature) is a glimpse in to the conscience and psyche of our famed hero. Being a short piece the pacing is key and here it does well, the scene is set and the arc of the story works well over the running time.

The direction the whole is not bad and there are some great shots. However the steady-cam or perhaps just plain hand-held crowd scenes and other action scenes throughout are just a little to shaky (Paul Greengrass on too much coffee anyone?).

The score was good, as was the grading of the film. I really liked the look they have gone for. The choice of materials for his suit harked back to the Adam West TV show, and after the slick carbon looking suit of TDK and BB is a little hard to deal with.

In conclusion most of the performances are fine and move what is an interesting story along nicely, and there are no major issues in my opinion, fans will enjoy it others might be more difficult to please.