Kyle Smith thought Bale exhibited " both the menace and the wit he showed in his brilliant turn in " American Psycho "" , and that the film works so well because of the realism , stating , " Batman starts stripping away each layer of Gotham crime only to discover a sicker and more monstrous evil beneath , his rancid city simultaneously invokes early '90s New York , when criminals frolicked to the tune of five murders a day ; " Serpico " New York , when cops were for sale ; and today , when psychos seek to kill us all at once rather than one by one . "