Movie Review - Batman: Assault on Arkham

Some of you remember in my double review of Son of Batman and Arkham Origins: Cold, Cold Heart that those would be the start of many Batman related posts coming in the year to honour the Dark Knight's 75th anniversary. Unfortunately, I haven't really been able to find anything to do with Batman to look at this year because I pretty much did most of that last year which was to lead into the next Arkham game. And because we're now not getting an Arkham game this year, I'm actually struggling to find anything big to review that is based on Batman. But this is only the second post about Batman that I've done so far so don't worry, there will be something big and Batman related for me to do before the year ends (though I could say third or fourth if you count his appearance in The LEGO Movie as well as my series review of the DC Animated Original Movies from Doomsday to War as something Batman related) and it won't be LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham but something a little bit more bigger than that. Anyway, I've ranted long enough so let's take a look at the newest DC Animated Original Movie which is also a film that ties into the Arkhamverse serving as a direct sequel to Arkham Origins:

So the story goes like this. The Riddler (this time voiced by Matthew Gray Gubler) has acquired information on members of Amanda Waller's (reprised by C. C. H. Pounder from Justice League Unlimited) Suicide Squad and dispatches her men to take him out. But Batman (reprised by long time and much loved voice actor of Batman, Kevin Conroy) intervenes and takes Riddler to Arkham. This has Waller form the Suicide Squad consisting of the world's greatest assassin Deadshot (voiced by Neal McDonough), Joker's (reprised by Troy Baker from Arkham Origins) ex-girlfriend Harley Quinn (voiced by Hynden Walch), one of the Flash's rouges Captain Boomerang (voiced by that second in command naval office from POTC, Greg Ellis), a not so well know but long time enemy of Batman called Black Spider (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito), a humanoid shark called King Shark (voiced by Bender himself, John DiMaggio), the female and quite good looking version of Mr Freeze called Killer Frost (voiced by the female Commander Shepard, Jennifer Hale) and a former special agent of the KGB known as KGBeast (voiced by Nathan Drake himself, Nolan North who also to the displeasure of others, reprises his role of Penguin from Arkham City and Origins). Waller explains the mission to them which involves infiltrating Arkham Asylum to find the Riddler's cane and presumably dispose of the information and shows that this is a matter of do it or die by killing KGBeast. And so the team head into Gotham to do just that, but when their mission gets somehow aligned to something that Batman is also doing, all hell breaks loose in Arkham with who knows what going on.

Now I think its fair to say that since Flashpoint Paradox, all DC Animated Original Movies have been given the Anime treatment which I guess is to make them more mature than it needs to be and for fans of those superheroes and villains. I think the idea of having a villain centred film is a good one as DC and WB haven't done one of these until now and I actually like it. There is a great set of characters here and the voice acting as always in DC material, is top notch yet again. The animation is good, the action is great and there's even a bit of fan service for those of us who enjoy a bit of flesh from the female characters. It manages to keep true to the games and while it may be a little bit inconsistent (especially towards the end of it), its still a blast and a great Batman story overall. 9/10