Batman Begins (Movie)

Batman Begins

Christian Bale : Bruce Wayne/Batman
Michael Caine : Alfred
Liam Neeson : Ducard
Katie Holmes : Rachel Dawes
Gary Oldman : Jim Gordon
Cillian Murphy : Dr. Jonathan Crane
Tom Wilkinson : Carmine Falcone
Morgan Freeman : Lucius Fox
Directed by Christopher Nolan

I kept hearing that the latest version of the Batman saga, Batman Begins, was Batman done right. The movie, for the most part, has been getting rave reviews and since I’m a fan of comic book based movies I figured I’d give it a try. My take on it is that the movie is good, but not the great movie that everyone would have you believe that it is.

The movie can be split into three parts, the first part shows us the origins of Batman, the second part demonstrates the logistics of becoming a super hero and the third part is a classic good guy versus bad guy action flick.

Unless you’ve been living on another planet you’re probably aware that the seeds of Batman were planted when young Bruce Wayne witnessed the murder of his parents at the hands of a thief. After his parents death, Bruce grows up under the tutelage of the family butler Alfred, but is an angry, despondent young man who blames himself, in part, for the demise of his parents. When Bruce gets older he travels the world and mixes with thieves and low lives in an attempt to better understand the criminal element. Along the journey he is recruited by what might be best described as a Ninja cult called the League of Shadows and while part of the cult, he is trained in the martial arts, and stealth techniques.

Bruce parts company with the League of Shadows when, upon graduating from their cult, he learns that their methods are a bit too extreme for his tastes.

He then returns to Gotham City where he decides to fight crime with his new found skills. Bruce takes on the image of Batman because he fears bats and feels the image of a bat will strike fear into the hearts of criminals.

As mentioned above the second part of the movie deals with the logistics of becoming a super hero and this is probably the weakest part of the whole movie. Here we see how Batman acquires all of his great toys, and how the Batcave and Batmobile came to be. Although it was interesting and fun seeing the origin of all of his equipment, there was just too much detail. This would have worked in a book but in a movie its just telling us a whole lot more then we need to know. Batman fans will probably enjoy this sequence, but the whole thing just slows the movie down, which probably isn’t a good thing for an action movie.

The final third of the movie pits Batman against the villains and while this is without a doubt the best part of the movie, I never felt any real excitement from it. For this type of thing to work you have to be involved with the characters; you need to care if they live or die. The problem was the movie did little to make you care about anyone. The Bruce Wayne character was too cold and distant, which was probably the intent of the writer and director, and none of the other characters were developed enough to allow you to relate to them. This was a big mistake. I didn’t care if any of them survived. You could have nuked Gotham City and I wouldn’t have flinched.

Acting in the movie was for the most part good.

Christian Bale did a pretty good job as Batman, but it’s really hard playing a character that’s disconnected from the world. He was believable in this role but faced an up-hill battle trying to make us sympathetic to the character without really liking him. I’m not convinced he succeeded.

Cillan Murphy was totally miscast as Scarecrow / Dr. Jonathan Crane. He has the looks of a young teenager and just seemed inappropriate for the part. Every time he came on the screen he stuck out like a sore thumb and broke the magic of the movie. Did the movie really need this character anyway? Super hero movies often suffer from the “lets throw another villain” into the mix syndrome. For some reason writers feel that if one villain is good, then two or more will be even better. It doesn’t work that way. One is sufficient. Keep focused!

As for Katie Holmes, she seems like a lovely sweet girl, but I just don’t think movies are her thing. There is something about her that just doesn’t work on the big screen. It may be nothing more then I’ve typed cast her as Joey Potter on Dawson’s Creek, but I suspect that there is something else going on. If I were her manager I would steer her towards TV; she’s likeable enough and I bet she could have a long career doing sitcoms, but my guess is that movie star is just not in the cards for her.

Michael Caine was excellent as Alfred. He once again proves that a great actor can take just about any part and bring it to a higher level. Alfred was a relatively minor character in this movie yet Caine was able to make him three-dimensional. He was the only character in the film that I can say that I truly cared about. I hope that they make better use of him in the sequel.

Tom Wilkinson also did great job as crime lord Carmine Falcone. This character was very much a stereotypical comic book character and WIlkinson captured him spot on. Again this is an instance of a minor character becoming something more because of the talent of the actor portraying him.

Batman Begins is definitely worth seeing and is a respectable entry in to the super hero movie genre, but doesn’t quite make it into the top tier. Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, maybe they’ll be able to do a better job with the sequel.

7 out of 10 Stars

Posted by Al on 01/10/10 at 10:29 PM in Movies