Batman Begins

For anyone who has lost faith in the Batman series, Batman Begins is the movie that finally gets it right. This is the movie that restores the much needed dignity to the memory of the series, which was destroyed by the likes of camp director Joel Schumacher. While this may not seem fair to fans of Schumcher's work, it wasn't just him as the helmer, it was screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and probably the likes of a lot of unnamed sources who wanted to make Batman funnier, comical, and flashy. For a character like Batman, this just doesn't seem to work with the exception of the camp defined TV series starring Adam West & Burt Ward. Batman Begins completely does away with that with a completely fresh perspective: how Bruce Wayne became Batman.

Adapted from the works of Frank Miller and probably a lot of other Batman works, co-writer David Goyer and director Christopher Nolan follow the much tortured path of billionaire Bruce Wayne. How as a young boy he witnessed the merciless execution of his parents at the hands of a lowlife (no Joker involved), where his thirst for justice didn't just stop at making sure that murderer didn't get out of jail free, when his anger-fueled journey took him to the lowest depths of existence by being a criminal and a vagabond. Batman Begins starts off with a young Bruce held up in a prison in a foreign country. He's an easy target for convicts looking to get their edge by pummeling someone else, but it's their mistake when he beats them to a pulp. Mysteriously, he just happens to be under the eye of a warrior named Ducard (Liam Neeson), who encourages Bruce to join the League Of Shadows, a mysterious organization that erases crime, headed by Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). This is all traced back to Batman's origin, tied in with his eventual return to Gotham to rid it of crime, but it just so happens that he knows Lucious Fox, a Wayne Enterprises employee and gadget master who helps Wayne assemble his alter ego, right with the help of loyal father figure Alfred (Michael Caine). It's the nemesis that Bruce has to find which includes a tyrannical mobster (Tom Wilkinson), an arrogant psychiatrist named Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), with a twisted alter ego called Scarecrow, and a plethora of corrupt cops, crooks, and savages all over crime-ridden Gotham. Aiding Batman is righteous cop Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and righteous attorney Rachael Dawes (Katie Holmes).

For a two and a half hour movie, Batman Begins manages to fill every minute of it. Between the explosions and the impressive sound is the story: Bruce Wayne's plight. It illustrates what motivated the man to become the Caped Crusader as well as a glimpse of the disease-ridden Gotham he calls home. As embodied by Christian Bale, there's a sense of darkness that's understood in Bruce Wayne, starting off with his parents' unjust death. Unlike the excellent Tim Burton movies, the parents or more specifically Bruce's dad Thomas, are given more dimension than they were in the 1989 version, who were just setups for a motive instead of thinking characters. The development of Thomas Wayne is more rich and developed, tying into the film's themes of honor and nobility, which Bruce must develop and even puts him into friction with the League Of Shadows (setting up for a great action sequence).

Batman Begins does indeed have a great cast and each actor takes their character seriously. Most movies with a sprawling cast tend to bounce from one to the other with no real balance but this movie fine tunes that. Seriously, it's over two hours so it better cover as much ground as it can and it does. The development of these characters are rich, along with dialogue that doesn't seem to come out of a comic book as expository. Aside from Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman who all turn in first rate performances as supporting characters, is Rutger Hauer as a shady corporate guy, who is well cast as one of many bad guys. Liam Neeson turns in a vivid impression as the kind of guy you want to be under his wing, until you realize his motivations underneath. While for fans of Ken Watanabe, it's almost like he plays the same guy in The Last Samurai, bringing out that mystery and danger but Watanabe is only in a small role. I originally thought that Scarecrow was just going to be a loon with a burlap bag over his head, but the filmmakers improve on that by illustrating the kind of twisted persona that Scarecrow inhabits: scaring his test subjects with a fear drug and only adding to the illusion with the mask, thanks to well used special effects. Character actor Tom Wilkinson has never done a bad job of playing anybody, and as the menacing sleazeball Falcone, you just can't wait for the bastard to get what he finally deserves.

The production design, special effects (practically CG-free), sound, and everything else are just cool. Much of Batman Begins doesn't look like a giant set as the other Batman films did, which make sprawling Gotham look like minature sets. The big con in the movie though could be the editing, which given into moments of Batman kicking bad guy butt, are edited too quickly that you never get any real glimpse of the man behind the suit, doing the butt kicking, just a series of too quick edits. Batman Begins manages to avoid doing any of that. Director Christopher Nolan and David Goyer do a noble job of giving us Batman the way he should be: gritty, hardcore, and practically remorseless. There's a morsel of humanity underneath that scowling cape, but you have to keep watching to find it.