Batman Begins

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Summary:
Driven by the guilt and anger of his parents' murder, the grown up billionare Bruce Wayne becomes Gotham's last hope of the fight against crime... by dressing up as a bat and jumping across rooftops at night.

Review:
Everyone is hoping this will be the jumpstart to a better Batman franchise. Well, to hope this would be better than Batman & Robin should be considered a joke. I'm not laughing. Let's all thank our lucky stars that Chris Nolan has made a cooler Batman than Joel Schumacher! Woohoo!
As a young boy, Bruce falls in a cave on the Wayne manor, and is bombarded by bats, growing a strong fear of them. One night upon leaving an opera, the Waynes are mugged, leading to the murder of his parents right before his eyes. Of course, Bruce feels responsible in some way, and once he's all grown up he goes to Tibet and becomes a member of the League of Shadows, a militant group of freedom fighters. They tell him a lot of stuff about fear, such as "face your fear. Once you learn to face your fear, you must embrace it. Control your fear. Fear is the mind killer. Anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering!" (I'm kidding about some of that). He refuses to kill anyone, and because of this he is exiled from the group, and returns to Gotham to use his newfound skills to wreak havoc on the scum of the crime-ridden society. I'm sure most people know about Batman, so there's no further introduction required.
There are a few villians in this first go-around, with the most prominent one being Scarecrow. He wears a scarecrow mask and shoots a powder of fear on his victims, causing them to go criminally insane. Half of Gotham's anti-crime force is bought out by lynchpin Carmine Falcon, and so Bruce finds himself in quite a pickle when he returns to his hometown.
Christian Bale is a great Batman, just as much as all the supporting cast does a great job with their given parts. The standouts for me would be Liam Neeson and Michael Caine, who play important roles in the molding of Bruce Wayne into the Batman. Katie Holmes is kind of unnecessary, but then again there has to be a romantic interest at some point in the story, so here she is.
The streets of Gotham are dark and gritty, and Batman himself fits in well with his surroundings. The action scenes are kind of a disapointment, because it's cut so quickly and close-cropped that you can't see what the hell is going on. It sucks! There's still some bit of kinetic energy with it, but I was pretty let down for the most part. I hope that in the inevitable sequel, there will be a stronger emphasis on more visually impressive hand-to-hand fighting.
I enjoyed a lot of the special effects, and there were some nice explosions in the end. It had a great storyline, and the objectives behind the bad guys' plans to wreak havoc on Gotham provided some pleasant twists that worked handsomely within the context of the storyline at hand. I respect the fact that there was no last-minute twist that came from left field only to make you go 'woah!' The reaction this time around is more like, 'alright, that makes sense. It's not mind-blowing, but at least it works right.'
This wouldn't be a complete review without stating my biggest gripe: the microwave liquid-drying contraption. It's a vital part of one of the villian's master plans, and the idea that a machine which completely sucks away ALL liquid within its' vicinity means that human beings would also be sucked dry and destroyed. My suspension of disbelief didn't reach far enough to let go of this concept enough to accept that this machine was ONLY drying out water inside metal pipes, but not affecting humans at all.

In my opinion, Nolan's version shouldn't really be compared to the others, but I'll go ahead and say that I still enjoyed Burton's version more. Of course, anyone who takes on a previous establishment of a popular series will have their own take on things, and Chris Nolan's is decent enough as it is. This is the beginning of the crime fighting vigilante's escapades, and I respect that time was spent trying to build a solid background on Bruce Wayne in this film before even getting to the batsuit. It was fun seeing how he got all those wonderful toys, too! The introduction to the next installment was very smooth indeed, with a particular stroke of genius with incidents at Arkhum asylum. Great setup for the sequel (and then some)! Once all was said and done, Batman Begins is a good movie that isn't perfect, but is definetely worth watching.

Putting the movie title at the very end was a nice touch, as well.

GRADE: B

Reviewed 6/18/05