Batman Begins

Review by Jason Gaston

Holy crap, Batman! After years of studio hacks and people who really just didn’t care about your character have had their sorted ways with you, someone has finally gotten you right on the money the best way there was available. Start over!

Batman Begins is the story of how Batman began. We start with Christian Bale as a young Bruce Wayne somewhere in Asia where he’s been thrown into a rough and tumble prison. There, he is recruited into an organization called The League of Shadows by a man named Ducard (Liam Neeson) who is working for a man called Ra’s Al Ghul. They like Bruce and want a cut of his jig.

High in the mountains, they train him to be invisible, to fight six hundred men at once, and that rubber nipples are not, never have been, and never will be fashionable. Once back in Gotham City, Bruce begins to protect the city from crime as Batman.

And it couldn’t come at a better time, really, as an insidious scheme is about to unfold thanks to a sadistic psychiatrist and his hideous alter ego, The Scarecrow.

And thus, live action Batman is pulled out of the cesspool, hosed off, and given the makeover it so desperately deserved. Batman Begins is not the gaudy theatrical show that many people are expecting with larger than life villains and sets that look like they came out of some lame Broadway musical.  Instead, it's thoughtful and deep, dark and broody the way that Batman should be.

The truth is, Batman Begins is the first movie to ever be about Batman and Bruce Wayne. This is a character piece and a very well-written and well-acted one at that. To be perfectly honest here, this was the first Batman movie where I actually found Bruce Wayne to be as interesting if not more interesting than Batman himself.

The cast of this movie is phenomenal. Christian Bale sells himself as the billionaire playboy and Dark Knight while Michael Cain takes a turn as his beleaguered butler Alfred. Gary Oldman steps in as a young Lt. Gordon, the future Chief of the Gotham PD.

There’s a lot of great action in this movie including a nice rough and tumble chase in the new Batmobile. I kind of wish that the direction during the other action sequences would have been a little better directed, but I’m not going to quibble too much about that. Nolan got the job done and he got it done loads better than Shumacher could dream of.

It’s not very often that a comic book movie comes out that is this fresh, this believable, and – best of all – this accessible to a wide audience. There is no camp, so silly misplaced humor, no over the top goth, and Batman utters not a single lame one-liner during the whole affair. Batman has been placed back into the hands of people who know him, love him, and understand him. This movie is about raw excitement, action, and just plain good drama.

It’s a tad overlong and drawn out, but that’s another nitpick that is easily forgivable. Batman Begins is the best live action Batman movie and the first ever to get the character right. The first ever to venture into Bruce Wayne’s dark inner psyche and, even though the character of Batman is brought down a couple of pegs, he’s as interesting as ever.

If Bats is kept in the right hands, I foresee this new Batman franchise as a glorious one. I just hope Warner Brothers has learned from its past mistakes and keeps the bar raised this time around.