Overall Rating
 Awesome: 48.27%
Worth A Look: 25.87%
Average: 16.4%
Pretty Bad: 5.54%
Total Crap: 3.93%
21 reviews, 307 user ratings
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| Batman Begins |
by Luke Pyzik
"Holy Masterpiece, Batman!"
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“Batman Begins” is like no comic book movie you have ever seen. Debate will always rage online and in movie geek circles about which adaptation is the “best,” but surely no one will be able to argue that “Batman Begins” is not completely unique. Never before has a superhero film been made with an almost obsessive desire to ground the outrageous events of the story into reality. While most movies of this genre require the audience to suspend their disbelief, director Christopher Nolan and writer David Goyer have crafted a film that invites your disbelief along for the ride. The result is something we never thought we could expect from a “Batman” movie – a deeply moving, politically relevant drama that also happens to be wildly entertaining, edgy, funny, and cool.The opening scenes find billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) busting heads in the dregs of a Chinese prison. The gritty reality and general “Midnight Express” vibe will have some audience members checking the theater number to make sure they’re in the right place. Can a superhero movie really look and feel like this? The first forty minutes of this movie is an absolute schooling by Nolan in how to create tight, meaningful exposition. In this extended sequence, the story jumps around freely in time, from Bruce Wayne’s stay in the prison, to his tragic childhood, to his training by a mysterious organization called the League of Shadows. These events are beautifully shot and composed, developing the character while also presenting some flourishes of action in the prison and training scenes. Even the parts that focus on Bruce Wayne’s parents, whose fate almost everyone knows by now, feel fresh. There are genuine moments between Bruce and his parents, making his emotional journey that much more believable for the audience.
Liam Neeson joins the party as Ducard, a League of Shadows representative who trains Bruce to manage his fear and use other’s fear against them. In between the training scenes, Bruce and Ducard discuss the nature of crime, punishment, and the judicial system. For these scenes alone, the movie may one day be taught in university Criminology classes. I mean, it’s not exactly Dostoyevsky, but relatively speaking, it provides the film with way more substance than we’ve come to expect from entertainment tailored for mainstream consumption. It is yet another way that Nolan and Goyer ground this film in reality. By allowing the characters to seriously discuss the meaning of “justice,” they’re letting the audience know the movie matters.
When business is finished with the “League of Shadows,” Bruce makes his way back to Gotham City, whose citizens all thought him dead, to take his rightful place at his father’s company, and, more importantly, gain access to the company’s extensive military research and development branch. Soon, Bruce Wayne is donning the Batsuit, and it is here where the movie hits its one small snag. In the first forty minutes, Nolan and Goyer have done such a remarkable job in establishing the real world mood of the film, and Christian Bale has turned Bruce Wayne into such a rich, complex, lifelike character, that we have a hard time making the jump to him actually wearing that damned suit. It almost feels obligatory; like if Nolan had his way, he would just have Batman be a guy in military armor and a ski mask, sticking it to the bad guys. With the set up we’re given, I’d almost rather have it that way too. The suit is about four inches away from working. We can buy the armor, the utility belt and cape, but the pair of two inch pointy ears at the top of the mask? In the world that Nolan and Goyer have created, it’s asking a lot of the audience to believe Wayne would actually wear that thing. But still, there are no fetishistic shots of the suit, and since they don't obsess over the suit, neither do we, and it’s a relatively overlookable problem.
The supporting cast is a knockout, with Michael Cain as Alfred, who brings a gentle humanity to the role and becomes the emotional anchor of the movie, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, who is basically Batman’s “Q,” Tom Wilkinson as Gotham’s resident crime boss, and Cillian Murphy as an insane psychiatrist praying on patients fears to turn them against the residents of Gotham. There’s not a weak link in the bunch, though some have argued Katie Holmes doesn’t hold her own as Bruce Wayne’s childhood friend and love interest. I get the feeling the reaction may be more frustration over the Tom Cruise circus, but it is true that her character is pretty expendable, which has more to do with her character being crowbared into the story than with Holmes’ performance. But it's Gary Oldman who gives the best supporting turn as Detective Jim Gordon, a stand-up cop who becomes Batman’s ally. Oldman, who has played, among many other things, a pimp, an evil space villain, a corrupt cop, and Dracula, proves once again that he can step into any role and knock it out of the park. Here, he is tortured and sad, desperately trying to do the right thing in a city that is falling apart.With the discussions in “Batman Begins” about crime, justice, and the controlling power of fear, it is hard not to see parallels between what happens in Gotham and what is currently happening in the world. The main villains in the movie are overzealous fundamentalists that wish to use people’s fears to manipulate and destroy them. Sound familiar? The message in “Batman Begins” is to not let your fear control you. It might be nice if our own leaders gave us the same message.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12435&reviewer=381
originally posted: 06/23/05 23:10:59
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USA
15-Jun-2005 (PG-13)
DVD: 18-Oct-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
16-Jun-2005
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