Batman Begins (2005) Reviewed by Stephen Bourne, Ottawa, Canada. http://www.geocities.com/iamstephenbourne/moviequips.html
The body bag of bleak nightfall consumes Gotham City. It envelopes the rotting stench of pervasive corruption and cloaks this gutted oceanside corpse of concrete and glass in the chilled hard shadows of festering death. This is his playground. His war zone, readily adopted and spread out below him. It waits. Hoping. In desperate need of a saviour. A dark avenger. The thick cold wind rips past him, biting into Batman's face as he heaves himself from that towering skyscraper perch into this decaying abyss without hesitation. The thundering air pressure boils against his black body armour. Underneath, flesh and muscle and bone ache and strain against each pounding gust's reverberation. Adrenaline clamps his brain in a bear trap of rabid spasms. It feels good. This is his time. This is his calling, to do what others fail to do out of fear and greed and apathy. As Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), locked in a maelstrom of torment that had sent him far from the pampered life he'd known in boyhood into the criminal underworld as a brutal thug, he was still merely a man upon his return. A man helpless against the tide of despair that cripples this metropolitan slum. A man who could be summarily murdered, just as his parents had been ruthlessly gunned down in front of his young eyes in that decrepit alley decades before. Twenty years of orphaned mourning, of studying his enemies by becoming one of them, honing his mind and body towards meting out vengeful justice, would have been wasted if he now faced them as a man. In the Far East, Bruce had learned from the merciless Ra's Al Ghul's League of Shadows under the harsh teachings of Ducard (Liam Neeson; 'Excalibur' (1981), 'Kingdom of Heaven' (2005)) that becoming more than a man was key to his survival and success. To revive his billionaire father Thomas Wayne's forgotten dream of the glimmering ideal that was once Gotham City, he needed to become a symbol. Something elemental, he confided to his long suffering butler Alfred (Michael Caine; 'The Ipcress File' (1965), 'Austin Powers in Goldmember' (2002)) on the homeward bound private jet. Something more terrible than his formidable foes have ever faced. He needed to become a beast. A legend shrouded in petrifying myth that would disarm them, just as it had done when he was a frightened eight year-old swallowed whole by his palatial manor's old well and swarmed by bats. Suddenly, the ground flashes upwards. His eyes glint and burn behind the ghoulish horned mask that hides his identity from the world. Batman's gloved hands tense, throwing a sharp electrical current into his swirling black cape, stiffening its synthetic fabric into wings that curl his free fall into a low controlled flight towards an unscheduled rendezvous with his silent ally, GCPD Detective James Gordon (Gary Oldman; 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992), 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' (2004)). Renowned psychologist Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy; '28 Days Later...' (2002), 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' (2003)), nortorious director of Arkham Asylum, had gotten the better of Batman as The Scarecrow the first time they'd met, but now the Dark Knight is prepared to stop this hideously macabre fiend from endangering the water supply in a deadly plot masterminded from the shadows by a cleverly deceptive old rival bent on mass extermination.
When asked, co-writer David S. Goyer ('The Crow: City of Angels' (1996), 'Blade: Trinity' (2004)) reportedly explained that creative team Jeph Loeb's and Tim Sale's Batman graphic novels The Long Halloween (1999) and Dark Victory (2001) were major influences on his and Oscar-nominated co-writer/director Christopher Nolan's ('Memento' (2000), 'Insomnia' (2002)) script for Hollywood's long anticipated return to Gotham. So, diehard fans of the famed Caped Crusader should probably first put aside all memories of wunderkind Frank Miller's ground breaking The Dark Knight Returns (1986), and then forget about television's campy 'Batman' (1966-1968) and its big screen 1966 spin off also starring Adam West and Burt Ward, as well as wipe the slate clean of pretty well every other published and cinematic offering that's ever seeped into popular culture since writer Bill Finger's (1914-1974) and artist Bob 'Kane' Kahn's (1915-1998) The Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. That's a mighty tall, near impossible task, but 'Batman Begins' apparently wants to start fresh - especially where director Tim Burton's artfully quirky 'Batman' (1989) and 'Batman Returns' (1992), and director Joel Schumacher's fairly embarrassing 'Batman Forever' (1995) and 'Batman and Robin' (1997) are concerned. That's this oftentimes exasperatingly long, hundred and forty-one minute screening's main problem. Goyer and Nolan seem to forget that it's that relatively rich history that'll likely fill more theatre seats this time around than whatever critical acclaim this project that's endured several mis-starts and rewrites over the past handful of years gets from the likes of CNN, AOL, Entertainment Weekly, Time magazine and even the Chicago Tribune - all owned by Time Warner, which also owns Warner Bros. Studios and DC (formerly Detective Comics). Don't get me wrong, I'm not attempting to suggest any kind of conspiracy to bump up steadily lagging box office profits for the corporate hive, but I do suspect that I must have sat through a different movie than what those far more experienced "real critics" have apparently squealed in glee over. Primarily because the 'Batman Begins' that I sat through started out rather promising but quickly turned into a weirdly unimpressive quagmire of lazy writing, uninspired character development and cheesy effects that ultimately left me bored and tired from continually rolling my eyes at its relentless silliness, long before the sweet release of the closing credits. Unfortunately, most of this cast's otherwise proven acting talent is collectively, forgettably wasted here. Its star Christian Bale's ('American Psycho' (2000), 'The Machinist' (2004)) awkwardly impersonalised, pouting-as-rage interpretation of Batman isn't particularly innovative or captivating, choosing to internalize and squander away much of what has made this otherwise dangerously vengeful character's duality interesting to a paying audience for generations. You see him heavily relying on a Miller-esque narrative that never materializes, expecting you to switch off your brain and be dazzled by the posing and the flying and the swarming CGI bats. It's as though somebody went through the script with a red pen, replacing everything that might be too psychologically intellectual or remotely "thinky" with theatrically vapid shorthand and more explosive, badly shot fight scenes. As though depicting something dark and grim simply means turning down the lights. Yawn. Sure, you want to see Batman kick butt in the cape and cowl and roar through the night in that unrecognizable yet ultra cool battle tank of his, but this disjointed snooze fest would have been a far more satisfying exercise in retooling the origins of over sixty years of history if time had been spent firmly establishing the nefarious depths of his various enemies here, and Bruce Wayne had been lost to his self-destructive torment much longer than shown, before ever touching his rubberized costume or nifty gadgets, frankly. It fails, when compared to the 'Spider-Man' and 'X-Men' films, as a worthwhile super hero adaptation. It fails, except as self-infatuated eye candy for those who love undemanding live action cartoons that could have starred anyone, when compared to such exceptionally superior vendetta flicks as 'Road to Perdition' (2002), 'The Last Samurai' (2003) and 'Man on Fire' (2004). It's definitely not as campy as most of its cinematic predecessors but, sadly, this over-long and aggravating, boring big screen blunder is hardly worth the price of admission.
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