‘Batman – Under The Red Hood’ sets out its stall early: gagged and bound on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, the Joker brutally pummels Robin with a crowbar, blood splattering the floor with each sickening crunch of his skull. He leans in, his maniacal grin gleaming in the lights overhead. “Lets try and clear this up, pumpkin. What hurts more, A or B: forehand, or backhand?” Down comes the crowbar again.

Violence – necessary and unnecessary – is not only a recurring theme here, but arguably the central one. Warner Brothers’ animation department have clearly been given free reign to push Batman into new, more adult territory in this direct-to-video feature, and they run wild. Sprinkled liberally throughout the film’s many punishing action sequences are new and varied ways for familiar faces to be brutalised, with the plot drawing in both the familiar (the Joker, the Riddler) and the lesser known faces of Gotham. An early encounter with the android Amazo is typical, as the hulking beast throws Batman against steel cargo containers with a powerful thud that threatens to break his back. Brushing this aside as only animated heroes can, the caped crusader – aided by Nightwing, voiced wonderfully by Neil Patrick Harris – unleashes a whirlwind of kicks and punches, before landing an explosive charge which would surely have blown Amazo to pieces were it not for the vagaries of how comic book deaths are randomly dealt out.

As similarly bloody beatings are delivered again and again over the remaining 80 minutes, however, it becomes clear that the ‘adult’ elements of this story are entirely superficial and, dare I say it, designed solely to generate column inches. Sure, it’s pleasing to see fights which are stretched beyond the simple back alley brawls of Batman’s previous appearances, but this script is more often than not of saturday-morning cartoon quality, especially when one encounter ends with the titular Red Hood instructing Gotham’s drug lords to cut him 40% of their profits, but only if they refuse to peddle drugs to children. The Nickelodeon moralising would ordinarily seem both unwelcome and jarring, but that it stands out only for its poor delivery is telling: the rest of the dialogue is equally terrible, with hammy, clichéd lines spat out by most of the major characters – Batman and Red Hood in particularly – at alarmingly regular intervals.

The plot points are straight out of animation history too, and if you’ve spent any time in the Batman universe you’ll have seen both the locales, and the specific events within them. Indeed, such is the level of homage that Under The Red Hood begins to feel like a victory parade, particularly as we’re forced to once again revisit the creation of the Joker as he falls once more into yet another vat of acid. The entirely perfunctory scene is only broken up by the Red Hood refusing to kill Batman for what amounts to a plot contrivance that *makes no sense*. Their relationship is explored effectively throughout the film, and whilst those scenes do thankfully pack a punch, all they do is serves to illuminate the glaring plot holes and irregularities to Red Hood’s behaviour elsewhere that threaten to derail the entire movie.

The Joker, on the other hand, is as devilishly entertaining as always, even if Warner doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with their portrayal. With Mark Hamill either unwilling or able to voice the character that he’s become synonymous with, the task is left to Futurama veteran John Di Maggio, and he delivers a understated if effective performance, largely stripping the Joker of the over-the-top craziness that Hamill played him with over the years, settling instead for a more measured, calculated reading. All of the best lines are his, and the scenes that bookend the film – that warehouse scene, and finally a three-way confrontation with Batman and Red Hood – are easily the best of the movie, as he watches with all the relish of a puppet master at the two men on his strings sparring.

Disappointingly, the ending fizzles at the last, as the writers swap out the powerful, thought-provoking ending they’ve spent so long setting up, for something altogether more predictable and cliché. There was never any question of Batman dying, of course, but it sure would have been nice to at least have him bloody his cape.