The Pale Blue Eye: Christian Bale's New Movie Gets Surprising Rotten Tomatoes Score

Christian Bale has been making hit movies for most of his life, and he's mostly known for projects like The Dark Knight, The Fighter, and American Hustle. Bale has won an Academy Award for his supporting role in The Fighter, and he hasn't stopped delivering noteworthy performances since. The actor is getting ready to release his next big film on Netflix with The Pale Blue Eye, which is being directed by Scott Cooper (Antlers, Black Mass). The upcoming movie centers on an 1830s murder, in which one of the main characters is a young Edgar Allen Poe. The movie takes place at West Point in 1830, and touches on the code of silence still observed by many organizations now when criminal investigations come knocking, from police and military to corporate and fraternal organizations. Now, we finally know what critics think of the film. Reviews for The Pale Blue Eye have started to be released, and now the film has its initial Rotten Tomatoes score. The film has gotten a 66% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it seems that it's better than fans of Bale could have thought.

The actor most recently played the villain of the latest Marvel Studios film, Thor: Love and Thunder. The film is set to feature the villainous Gorr the God Butcher, and reintroduce us to Natalie Portman as Jane Foster/Mighty Thor. Chris Hemsworth previously described what it was like working with Bale on set, calling it "really scary", and now the actor has detailed the villains complex backstory in a recent interview with D23 Magazine.

"[Gorr is] not a straightforward villain... there's a real complexity to him. It's not black and white, what he's doing. He has a truthful motivation, which I think makes for the most interesting kind of villain," Hemsworth said. "You might not agree with how he's going about it, but you understand why he's been tipped over the edge and why he's gone down this path. It's a really challenging one for Thor, because the set of questions Gorr's posing does hold some truth—but he can't let Gorr destroy the universe in the process. That, I think, makes this a greater dynamic and not as predictable as the straightforward good gut vs. bad guy scenario we've seen before."

Here's the official synopsis for The Pale Blue Eye via Netflix:

West Point, 1830. In the early hours of a gray winter morning, a cadet is found dead. But after the body arrives at the morgue, tragedy becomes savagery when it's discovered that the young man's heart has been skillfully removed. Fearing irreparable damage to the fledgling military academy, its leaders turn to a local detective, Augustus Landor (Christian Bale), to solve the murder. Stymied by the cadets' code of silence, Landor enlists the help of one of their own to pursue the case, an eccentric cadet with a disdain for the rigors of the military and a penchant for poetry — a young man named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling). Based on the novel by Louis Bayard, THE PALE BLUE EYE is directed by Scott Cooper and stars an acclaimed supporting cast, including Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Simon McBurney, Hadley Robinson, Timothy Spall and Robert Duvall.

What do you think about the Rotten Tomatoes score? Will you be watching Christian Bale's new movie? Let us know in the comments below or by hitting up our writer @NateBrail on Twitter!