First off, we have Bruce Greenwood (Captain Pike from the recent Star Trek movie) as Batman, who I think does a fantastic job in the role. It’s quite Conroyesque, if one can say such a thing, but with it’s own flair that makes it his own. Greenwood does a good job of bringing the intensity of the character to the screen, and — unlike other DC Animated films — I didn’t doubt for a second that I was hearing Batman when he spoke.

Jensen Ackles (of my favorite show, Supernatural) is The Red Hood, and he does a stupendous job. Ackles’ experience playing the intense and internally tortured Dean Winchester on Supernatural laid good groundwork for his work here as The Red Hood, as the character is fierce, tortured and amazingly intelligent. Even though I knew Ackles was in the movie, I didn’t even know it was his voice until several minutes in, so he does a good job making the role his own while NOT being Dean Winchester at the same time.

In one of the film’s few negatives, while Neil Patrick Harris does a fantastic job as the wise-cracking Nightwing, he’s only used for a fraction of the movie before he’s taken out. I understand the need for this, storywise, but it was still a little jarring to see him get taken out so quickly after his introduction, and felt this underutilized Harris’ contribution to the movie.

Making up for that, however, are John Di Maggio and Wade Williams, who play The Joker and Black Mask, respectfully. These two actors put their all into their roles, and it shows. Di Maggio doesn’t try to copy Mark Hamill’s performance as The Joker from the Animated Series, and it’s appreciated, as he adds his own nuance to the role. This Joker seems even more psychotic than Hammil’s, and it works in this PG-13 format (which I’ll talk about more in a moment). Williams also does a fantastic job as Black Mask, appropriately chewing up the screen in any scene he’s in. Other notables in the cast include Jason Isaacs, Gary Cole and Phil LaMarr. Overall, the voice acting here is fantastic, and I wasn’t taken out of the movie for a moment because of it.

Moving onto the story, this is the most brutal Batman animated story since Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker around a decade ago. Within the first few moments, for example, a teenager is beaten to near-death with a crowbar, and that’s not even the worst violence portrayed in the movie. This movie is unabashedly brutal, but since the story is so action-packed and graphically rich, it works. There are a lot of facets in this story, but in the end it comes down to revenge versus redemption, I think. Without giving any details away, many of the characters go through quite a bit of pummeling by the end, both physically and psychologically. It’s a very gritty story, moreso than many of the other DC Animated movies, and honestly shouldn’t be watched with small children.

I also have to praise the animation in this particular feature. There are a LOT of very physical fights that are almost acrobatic in nature, and the animation in this movie captures that better than any of the other animated features to date, in my opinion. There are several key moments where, if the animation were less fluid, the battle scenes would not have worked, but in this movie, they all work flawlessly.

Overall, with an exceptional combination of story, voice cast and animation, I think Batman: Under the Red Hood is one of the finest works that DC Animation has put out to date. It’s full of action, has a great story, fantastic voice acting and wonderful animation. If you have any interest at all in Batman, you owe it to yourself to pick this up. I’ve seen elsewhere where it’s been said to be better than the live action Batman Begins and The Dark Knight…and they well might be correct (despite the fact that animated Batman is nearly always better than live-action Batman).