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DC Universe Original Animated Movies brings us an adaption of two big Batman stories: A Death in the Family and Under the Red Hood.  I never read the stories to be honest (Yeah, yeah comic fans on the site, I'll get to them at some point), so I can't say how well they were adapted into a movie.  Regardless, this is still one hell of a movie.

It is five years after the murder of Jason Todd, the second Robin, and crime is rampant as ever in Gotham City.  A mysterious figure taking the identity of Red Hood comes into town and takes control of most of the major drug lords in town.  This forces a big Batman villian, Black Mask, to desperate measures.  Meanwhile; Batman must find Red Hood and unknownly, face a large tradgey from the past that he wasn't able to really get over.  I cannot say anymore.

The story is very good and it is also pretty dark as well.  I really wouldn't recommend this movie to young kids at all.  The movie opens up with Jason Tood getting beaten to death with a crowbar, some guy is set ablaze onscreen, and quite a few other things as well.  I was shocked by how dark this got overall.  Still, the story was very well written and everything came together well at end.

The animation was also pretty good and matched the dark themes of the story too.  However, the highlight here is the voice acting.  It was very good with a ton of recongizable people in this cast.  The three standout voices here are of course Batman, Red Hood, and the Joker.  Bruce Greenwood was Batman and I am bit disappointed by his preformance.  It never sat with me right and I never got a good batman vibe from him, though he did the job and was never bad in general.  Red Hood was done by Jensen Ackles (One of the brothers from Supernatural) and he was great.  He was convincing at the role and I handled all the dramatic parts well.

The Joker's voice actually surprised me the most.  At first, I wasn't really sure when I heard him first speak.  I don't know how to explain it, but it didn't really work.  The performance, however, got much better as the show went on.  John DiMaggio managed to scare me and make me laugh as I watched and heard the Joker, which is how I grade a preformance for the character.

To sum up, this is a great animated movie based on the stories of Batman.  I'm not sure how good it was in getting down all the major points of the stories this movie was adapted from, but I still think this holds out on its own regardless if it failed.  I highly recommend this to any Batman fan or anyone in general.  Just keep the little ones away.

   Thanks for the review. I was just talking about it with some co-workers. No one has actually seen it yet but now I'll check it out for sure.
   For the record, Kevin Conroy is the definitve animated Batman voice and I think he could have taught Christian Bale a thing or two as well.
   I saw Doogie Howser himself voiced Night Wing. How was that?

He was good and I thought he nailed the role of Nightwing quite well.  He didn't really have a big role in the film however.  The character twisted his ankle about 30 minutes in and he disappeared from the rest of the film until the very end in a nonspeaking role.  It was alright though since this film was more about the conflict between Batman and Red Hood anyways.

Having recently returned to the world of comic books (after being away from it for more than 20 years) I am interested in buying this DVD.

I grow addicted to "Batman TAS" during the 90s and I always watch every new Batman animated movie that is released. Until now all have seemed to me worthwhile, except for that one that was supposed to bridge between the two Batman films by Christopher Nolan.

I'm not familiarised with the whole Robin / Nightwing mithology, but I still found this movie to be one of the best of the bunch. It certainly can't touch "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker", which IMHO is the best Batman animated film ever made, but it comes close in some points, specially when it comes to the Joker. You can tell this Joker is closer to Heath Ledger's than to any other one, and the voice acting by Joe Dimaggio is, as InformationGeek put it, quite scary. I also appreciated Ra's Al Ghul playing a role in the events, he's one of my favourite Batman villains.

The only things I didn't like are the animation style and the action scenes. Regarding the animation, it's very good. It's just that a part of me keeps expecting the palette and the crude animation from "Batman TAS". I know, that was many years ago, and it's time for me to let go... but I still can't, not completely. To see Batman and Gotham City drawn in bright colors and manga-like visuals still shocks me a little bit, and I can't shake the feeling completely. As for the action bits, they're pretty good, I just think that there are too many of them and that they are too loud. I saw this film almost back to back with "Batman / Superman: Public Enemies", and in the end my head felt swollen.   

I bought this as soon as I could get my ass off of work and to Target.

I have thus watched it twice. Pretty bad-ass story and I love the amount of villains shown (even if in flashbacks). I was glad to finally see Black Mask on-screen and loved seeing Raz Al Ghul (well-voiced by the dude who played the elder Malfoy in Harry Potter...sorry, name escapes me atm). Joker, as usual, cracked me up in every scene. Red Hood was pretty kick ass and made for a good villain.

It was nice to see Bruce dealing with other problems besides being all emo about his parents, for a change (not that it's terrible when he does -it's just nice to see them mix it up a bit).  I'm glad they gave the love-interest a rest too.

If you're any kind of Bat fan, you should give it a shot. Although, I wouldn't recommend it for young children either -lots of blood, on-screen murder, and drug references. It's definitely got a darker tone.

One thing I learned from this movie: do not, ever, under any circumstance make a deal with the Joker.

Yeah.  This is an issue I have with a number of the newer animated Batman things (even Gotham when you see it in Justice League).  The color palette and style (they did the backgrounds on black paper in TAS, for one) of TAS are unmatched.  Spectacular stuff.  And anime-ish crap of some of the newer shows (particularly The Batman) is the OPPOSITE of what a Batman comic should look like.  There can be interesting variance (I though The Dark Knight Returns worked well) just not...  That.

Still, I'd like to see this one.  Interesting stuff.