Schlosser85
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DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
CAST:
Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe
REVIEW:
Batman is both one of DC Comics' most recognizable and popular characters and one of the most cinematically ill-used. Originally conceived as a brooding, troubled protagonist treading the line between hero and vigilante, the original seriousness was completely abandoned first by the campy 1960s television series starring Adam West, and then by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher's series of feature films in the late '80s and '90s. These movies started out over-the-top and ended up downright cartoonish. The entire original conception of the character had virtually been lost, and as the films grew ever more patently ridiculous, even fans had had enough. Batman looked dead in the water. Then British director Christopher Nolan, coming off the success of thrillers Memento and Insomnia, and screenwriter David S. Goyer took on the task of resurrecting Batman, not as a continuation of the previous lackluster film series, but as a totally new narrative showing us something we'd never seen onscreen before- the origins of the superhero. While remaining faithful to the broad strokes of established Batman background, Nolan and Goyer added a few original tweaks of their own to put their distinctive spin on the familiar story. Most importantly, they were faithful to the substantially darker and more serious original conception of the character. The result was by far the best Batman film yet made, and solid enough to appeal even to non-fans of the Caped Crusader. A Batman movie has finally been made right.
When we first see Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), the thirty-ish son of billionaire philanthropist Thomas Wayne (Linus Roache, who does look like he could be related to Bale), he has dropped off the map, haunted by his parents' murder at the hands of a mugger when he was a small boy (Gus Lewis) and disgusted by the corruption smothering Gotham City, traveling to the Far East to dedicate himself to studying the criminal underworld. He is tough and angry, but he doesn't yet quite know what he's doing, and is languishing anonymously in an Asian prison when he is approached by a mysterious stranger named Ducard (Liam Neeson) who introduces him to the equally enigmatic Ra's Al Ghul (Japanese actor Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai), head of the League of Shadows, who want Bruce to join them in their centuries-old mission to cleanse the world of evil. At the hands of Ra's and Ducard, Bruce learns to overcome his fear and focus his anger, but ultimately rejects their "ends justify the means" mentality and returns to troubled Gotham with a newfound sense of purpose. With the connivance of his faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and inventor Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Bruce develops the alter ego he needs to strike fear into the criminal underworld...Batman. He dons the cape and cowl just in time to face a villainous plot involving crime lord Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson with a wiseguy accent) and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), a psychiatrist who has his own alter ego as the masked Scarecrow and has developed a deadly panic-inducing toxin. Bruce must join forces with Sgt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), one of the only honest cops in Gotham, and a childhood friend, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), now an Assistant D.A. And the real mastermind behind the scheme has yet to reveal himself...
Batman Begins starts out a little unfocused. It's never unengaging, but it sometimes jumps around abruptly, starting with adult Bruce and then showing a series of flashbacks sketching out how he came to this point. The result is that at first the film threatens to be a little fragmented, but things settle into a more straightforward plot once Bruce returns to Gotham City. The darker approach is sprinkled with moments of humor throughout, but it never comes close to descending into the over-the-top cartoonish mess of the previous film series. Nolan and Goyer made a serious effort to keep everything based in reality, or inasmuch as it can be. The Batsuit and the Batmobile have plausible origins and a more military appearance, and Gotham itself, made to look like about as much of a cartoon fantasy land as possible in the earlier films, is represented by Chicago subtly enhanced and altered by a layer of digital animation. Nolan uses CGI sparingly, and what little there is doesn't call attention to itself. This time the filmmakers understand that well-used special effects enhance a story instead of taking it over. The Batmobile was actually constructed for the film and is fully capable of doing most of the things it does onscreen; shots of it smashing police cars and jumping across rooftops are the real deal. The first two-thirds of Batman Begins are the strongest. The villains' plot, when finally unveiled in its entirety, might be a little silly- it involves lacing the water with an airborne weaponized hallucinogen and then using a superweapon to vaporize the water supply and drive the citizens of Gotham insane- but what's come before was strong enough that the movie isn't derailed (although it's slightly reduced) by its eleventh hour surrender to comic book popcorn flick convention, complete with a few cheesy one-liners and an over-the-top evil scheme. The villains, who were allowed to steal the whole show in previous installments, are strictly supporting characters, and overacting is kept to a minimum. The film tells a good self-contained story, but its central focus is on the character of Bruce Wayne, and for almost the first time we get a sense of what's going on inside to make him tick. It takes until almost the halfway point for Batman as we know him to make his first appearance, but that's not a complaint. This is an origin story, and does such a believable- at least within the world it has created- and intriguing job of doing just that that we never get impatient. What motivates him to fight crime? Why does he choose the bat as his symbol? Where did the Batmobile and the Batsuit come from? How did Batman and Gordon first become allies? It's all here, and it all feels right. I also liked that Bruce isn't an invincible superman. The first time he tries jumping off a rooftop, he almost falls. He gets hurt and bruised and discouraged, and his encounters with his multiple adversaries don't always go smoothly. Rather than demythologize or weaken Batman, these scenes of the fledgling hero make him seem more real, more three-dimensional, and more human than ever before. This Bruce Wayne is compelling.
Christian Bale has exactly the right demeanor for this role, going for internalized stoicism. Rather than pouring out Bruce's pain and anger, Bale compacts it into a cold hard ball of steely-eyed determination. His buff appearance here a far cry from his previous performance in The Machinist, for which he lost sixty-five pounds to resemble a walking skeleton, Bale slips easily into the dual role of the billionaire socialite whose public persona of a spoiled drunken womanizer is as much a mask as the one he wears to fight criminals, and his menacing alter ego. Rather than simply being the body in the costume, he makes the part his own, and is equally convincing as Bruce Wayne and Batman, giving hands down the strongest yet portrayal of either. As of now, Bale is by far the best Bruce/Batman to appear onscreen.
Bale's quietly intense performance is at the center of the film, but he's backed up by a solid supporting cast. Liam Neeson is authoritative and imposing as a more dubious variation of his familiar mentor character. Michael Caine and the ever-dependable Morgan Freeman exude warmth and humor as two of Bruce's more benevolent mentors. Gary Oldman, arguably best-known for his roles as wildly scenery-chewing bad guys, is low-key and subdued as the decent, honest, so-normal-he's-kind-of-dull Gordon, the average Joe to Bale's superhero. Rounding out the supporting cast is Tom Wilkinson, with a wiseguy Mafioso voice in place of his natural British accent (it's interesting to note that over half the cast, including the lead, hails from the UK), chewing a little on the scenery as mob boss Falcone, Rutger Hauer as Mr. Earle, Thomas Wayne's less civic-minded successor as Chairman of Wayne Enterprises, and Ken Watanabe in basically a cameo as the mysterious, sinister Ra's Al Ghul. Irish actor Cillian Murphy, best-known from the chiller 28 Days Later , is the twisted psychiatrist Dr. Crane, and puts out enough of a "spooky freak" vibe even without his Scarecrow mask. Murphy is exceedingly creepy in limited screen time, and adopts a convincing American accent (for that matter, so do Christian Bale and Gary Oldman, but they've both passed as Americans so many times that one could be forgiven for not even knowing they're actually British). Katie Holmes is adequate as the idealistic Rachel Dawes, who fights for the same end result as Bruce using very different methods, but while not doing an embarrassingly bad job in her role, she's not particularly convincing either and is the only member of the cast to give the impression that she's out of her league. There's nothing noteworthy between she and Bale, but romance is such a peripheral part of the story that it doesn't matter much.
If there is a noteworthy flaw besides Holmes' bland performance and the third act slipping into a few moments of silliness it had previously strictly avoided, the fight scenes are not all that they could have been. Nolan relies on close-up shots and quick-cutting editing in the fight scenes, resulting in blurs of chaotic fight sequences that often obscure exactly what's happening. It's not a major flaw, but I would have preferred more clarity in the fight scenes. The lengthy car chase between the police and the Batmobile is easier to follow. With the exception of Gordon, the filmmakers don't do a good job aging the supporting characters; we first see Alfred and Earle when Bruce is a child, and when they reappear approximately twenty years later, they look the same.
But these are minor quibbles. While certainly not a perfect motion picture, Batman Begins is one of the strongest superhero movies out there, not only leaving all previous Batman flicks so far in its wake that they hardly seem worth mentioning, but surpassing all of the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, and breathing fresh new rejuvenating life into a film franchise which badly needed it. Bale, Oldman, Caine, and Freeman have already signed on for a second installment , scheduled for 2008, that I'm already looking forward to. I only hope this new Batman film series will live up to the promise of the first film and remain in the capable hands of Nolan, Goyer, and Bale.
3 1/2 STARS
http://www.angelfire.com/blog/jester_1/batmanbegins.html
CAST:
Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe
REVIEW:
Batman is both one of DC Comics' most recognizable and popular characters and one of the most cinematically ill-used. Originally conceived as a brooding, troubled protagonist treading the line between hero and vigilante, the original seriousness was completely abandoned first by the campy 1960s television series starring Adam West, and then by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher's series of feature films in the late '80s and '90s. These movies started out over-the-top and ended up downright cartoonish. The entire original conception of the character had virtually been lost, and as the films grew ever more patently ridiculous, even fans had had enough. Batman looked dead in the water. Then British director Christopher Nolan, coming off the success of thrillers Memento and Insomnia, and screenwriter David S. Goyer took on the task of resurrecting Batman, not as a continuation of the previous lackluster film series, but as a totally new narrative showing us something we'd never seen onscreen before- the origins of the superhero. While remaining faithful to the broad strokes of established Batman background, Nolan and Goyer added a few original tweaks of their own to put their distinctive spin on the familiar story. Most importantly, they were faithful to the substantially darker and more serious original conception of the character. The result was by far the best Batman film yet made, and solid enough to appeal even to non-fans of the Caped Crusader. A Batman movie has finally been made right.
When we first see Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), the thirty-ish son of billionaire philanthropist Thomas Wayne (Linus Roache, who does look like he could be related to Bale), he has dropped off the map, haunted by his parents' murder at the hands of a mugger when he was a small boy (Gus Lewis) and disgusted by the corruption smothering Gotham City, traveling to the Far East to dedicate himself to studying the criminal underworld. He is tough and angry, but he doesn't yet quite know what he's doing, and is languishing anonymously in an Asian prison when he is approached by a mysterious stranger named Ducard (Liam Neeson) who introduces him to the equally enigmatic Ra's Al Ghul (Japanese actor Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai), head of the League of Shadows, who want Bruce to join them in their centuries-old mission to cleanse the world of evil. At the hands of Ra's and Ducard, Bruce learns to overcome his fear and focus his anger, but ultimately rejects their "ends justify the means" mentality and returns to troubled Gotham with a newfound sense of purpose. With the connivance of his faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and inventor Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Bruce develops the alter ego he needs to strike fear into the criminal underworld...Batman. He dons the cape and cowl just in time to face a villainous plot involving crime lord Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson with a wiseguy accent) and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), a psychiatrist who has his own alter ego as the masked Scarecrow and has developed a deadly panic-inducing toxin. Bruce must join forces with Sgt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), one of the only honest cops in Gotham, and a childhood friend, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), now an Assistant D.A. And the real mastermind behind the scheme has yet to reveal himself...
Batman Begins starts out a little unfocused. It's never unengaging, but it sometimes jumps around abruptly, starting with adult Bruce and then showing a series of flashbacks sketching out how he came to this point. The result is that at first the film threatens to be a little fragmented, but things settle into a more straightforward plot once Bruce returns to Gotham City. The darker approach is sprinkled with moments of humor throughout, but it never comes close to descending into the over-the-top cartoonish mess of the previous film series. Nolan and Goyer made a serious effort to keep everything based in reality, or inasmuch as it can be. The Batsuit and the Batmobile have plausible origins and a more military appearance, and Gotham itself, made to look like about as much of a cartoon fantasy land as possible in the earlier films, is represented by Chicago subtly enhanced and altered by a layer of digital animation. Nolan uses CGI sparingly, and what little there is doesn't call attention to itself. This time the filmmakers understand that well-used special effects enhance a story instead of taking it over. The Batmobile was actually constructed for the film and is fully capable of doing most of the things it does onscreen; shots of it smashing police cars and jumping across rooftops are the real deal. The first two-thirds of Batman Begins are the strongest. The villains' plot, when finally unveiled in its entirety, might be a little silly- it involves lacing the water with an airborne weaponized hallucinogen and then using a superweapon to vaporize the water supply and drive the citizens of Gotham insane- but what's come before was strong enough that the movie isn't derailed (although it's slightly reduced) by its eleventh hour surrender to comic book popcorn flick convention, complete with a few cheesy one-liners and an over-the-top evil scheme. The villains, who were allowed to steal the whole show in previous installments, are strictly supporting characters, and overacting is kept to a minimum. The film tells a good self-contained story, but its central focus is on the character of Bruce Wayne, and for almost the first time we get a sense of what's going on inside to make him tick. It takes until almost the halfway point for Batman as we know him to make his first appearance, but that's not a complaint. This is an origin story, and does such a believable- at least within the world it has created- and intriguing job of doing just that that we never get impatient. What motivates him to fight crime? Why does he choose the bat as his symbol? Where did the Batmobile and the Batsuit come from? How did Batman and Gordon first become allies? It's all here, and it all feels right. I also liked that Bruce isn't an invincible superman. The first time he tries jumping off a rooftop, he almost falls. He gets hurt and bruised and discouraged, and his encounters with his multiple adversaries don't always go smoothly. Rather than demythologize or weaken Batman, these scenes of the fledgling hero make him seem more real, more three-dimensional, and more human than ever before. This Bruce Wayne is compelling.
Christian Bale has exactly the right demeanor for this role, going for internalized stoicism. Rather than pouring out Bruce's pain and anger, Bale compacts it into a cold hard ball of steely-eyed determination. His buff appearance here a far cry from his previous performance in The Machinist, for which he lost sixty-five pounds to resemble a walking skeleton, Bale slips easily into the dual role of the billionaire socialite whose public persona of a spoiled drunken womanizer is as much a mask as the one he wears to fight criminals, and his menacing alter ego. Rather than simply being the body in the costume, he makes the part his own, and is equally convincing as Bruce Wayne and Batman, giving hands down the strongest yet portrayal of either. As of now, Bale is by far the best Bruce/Batman to appear onscreen.
Bale's quietly intense performance is at the center of the film, but he's backed up by a solid supporting cast. Liam Neeson is authoritative and imposing as a more dubious variation of his familiar mentor character. Michael Caine and the ever-dependable Morgan Freeman exude warmth and humor as two of Bruce's more benevolent mentors. Gary Oldman, arguably best-known for his roles as wildly scenery-chewing bad guys, is low-key and subdued as the decent, honest, so-normal-he's-kind-of-dull Gordon, the average Joe to Bale's superhero. Rounding out the supporting cast is Tom Wilkinson, with a wiseguy Mafioso voice in place of his natural British accent (it's interesting to note that over half the cast, including the lead, hails from the UK), chewing a little on the scenery as mob boss Falcone, Rutger Hauer as Mr. Earle, Thomas Wayne's less civic-minded successor as Chairman of Wayne Enterprises, and Ken Watanabe in basically a cameo as the mysterious, sinister Ra's Al Ghul. Irish actor Cillian Murphy, best-known from the chiller 28 Days Later , is the twisted psychiatrist Dr. Crane, and puts out enough of a "spooky freak" vibe even without his Scarecrow mask. Murphy is exceedingly creepy in limited screen time, and adopts a convincing American accent (for that matter, so do Christian Bale and Gary Oldman, but they've both passed as Americans so many times that one could be forgiven for not even knowing they're actually British). Katie Holmes is adequate as the idealistic Rachel Dawes, who fights for the same end result as Bruce using very different methods, but while not doing an embarrassingly bad job in her role, she's not particularly convincing either and is the only member of the cast to give the impression that she's out of her league. There's nothing noteworthy between she and Bale, but romance is such a peripheral part of the story that it doesn't matter much.
If there is a noteworthy flaw besides Holmes' bland performance and the third act slipping into a few moments of silliness it had previously strictly avoided, the fight scenes are not all that they could have been. Nolan relies on close-up shots and quick-cutting editing in the fight scenes, resulting in blurs of chaotic fight sequences that often obscure exactly what's happening. It's not a major flaw, but I would have preferred more clarity in the fight scenes. The lengthy car chase between the police and the Batmobile is easier to follow. With the exception of Gordon, the filmmakers don't do a good job aging the supporting characters; we first see Alfred and Earle when Bruce is a child, and when they reappear approximately twenty years later, they look the same.
But these are minor quibbles. While certainly not a perfect motion picture, Batman Begins is one of the strongest superhero movies out there, not only leaving all previous Batman flicks so far in its wake that they hardly seem worth mentioning, but surpassing all of the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, and breathing fresh new rejuvenating life into a film franchise which badly needed it. Bale, Oldman, Caine, and Freeman have already signed on for a second installment , scheduled for 2008, that I'm already looking forward to. I only hope this new Batman film series will live up to the promise of the first film and remain in the capable hands of Nolan, Goyer, and Bale.
3 1/2 STARS
http://www.angelfire.com/blog/jester_1/batmanbegins.html
