Batman Begins tells the story of the early days of Bruce Wayne, how he became a crime-fighting Batman, what motivated him to do so, and where he got his technological wizardry from. We see him as he explores the criminal underworld and meets some odd characters of indeterminate moral fibre, some who help him, some who hinder him, and some who… well, some who are just plain odd.
It’s no big secret that Bruce’s parents are killed in a street mugging, that was already common knowledge. The path he takes after that, however, is quite surprising in places. In the midst of everything we have the unflappable Alfred (played by Michael Caine, who along with Morgan Freeman – whose role I’m not going to disclose in this review – gets by far the best lines in the movie) trying to keep Bruce on the straight and narrow, and attempting to uphold the family name. Bruce, meanwhile, has other priorities…
Bruce is played by Christian Bale, who seemed a bit of an odd choice to me but did a good job in the role, apart from a slightly annoying over-the-top husky voice that sounded like Bruce Willis with a sore throat. He seems athletic enough to carry the action scenes quite well, I wasn’t’ entirely convinced by his portrayal of emotions though. Katie Holmes made an attractive but rather uninteresting heroine in the form of Attoney Rachel Dawes, while Cillian Murphy made a pretty good baddie. Out of all the actors, Gary Oldman impressed me most in his role as Jim Gordon, one of the few honest cops left in Gotham city – his feeling of helplessness in the face of Gotham’s crime lords and his bemusement at Batman, along with his initial mistrust, were very believable. With the cast list also boasting Liam Neeson (who managed to deliver some highly suspect ines with conviction!), Rutger Hauer, and Ken Watanabe, the calibre of the actors here is very high indeed.
The real problem with this film is that everything about it smacks of style over substance, and everything is overdone. What we basically have here is the movie equivalent of a nice meal that’s been cooked too long, thus is nowhere near as nice as it should be. The first sequence showing the effects of a hallucinogenic agent is very effective, but was there any need to show us a similar lengthy sequence every time that hallucinogen was used? We got the message the first time… repeating it was pointless and just killed the pacing of the film stone dead. The action sequences too seemed to be trying too hard to be exciting and dramatic, with the result that they were neither. Before the film ended I found myself wondering how much longer it was going to drag on for. The motives of some of the characters were rather hard to believe and the end sequence with Dawes simply left me annoyed at how infuriatingly fickle she was, completely in contrast with the emotional resonance of the (in some ways) similar ending of the first Spiderman movie had. It doesn’t help either that the motives of some of the baddies in the film is confused to say the least – though at least they’re not transformed into super-villains after falling into a vat of toxic chemicals for once!!
In tone this is probably the darkest yet (yes, even darker than the Tim Burton films), but fails to hold together as well. Perhaps, like Batman Returns, this will grow on after a second viewing, but I’m certainly not in a hurry to see it again. (And of course this one doesn’t have the lure of Michelle Pfeiffer in a catsuit… :-D)
Visually I can’t fault this film, it’s an extremely well-produced piece of cinema and of course nowhere near as bad as the utterly awful Batman & Robin. It’s entertaining, tense, and funny in places, and with better editing and a slightly shorter film it would have been a lot better. As it is, the plot and action is spread too thinly over the runtime of the film, making some of it rather yawn-worthy. Great cast, great effects, but ultimately a rather disappointing film. For die-hard Batman or action film fans only, I think.
Batman Begins explores the origins of the Batman legend and the Dark Knight s emergence as a force for good in Gotham. In the wake of his parents murd...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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