Batman Begins (2005)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Bob Kane (characters), David S. Goyer (story), Christopher Nolan (screenplay)
Cast: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Ken Watanabe, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Mark Boone Junior, Linus Roache, Morgan Freeman, Colin McFarlane, Richard Brake
Synopsis:
After witnessing the death of his parents during a mugging as a young boy, Bruce Wayne (Bale) travels across the world seeking the means to fight injustice. He meets Henri Ducard (Neeson) during his travels, who convinces him to join the League of Shadows, a clandestine organization dedicated to fighting injustice by whatever means necessary. Soon Bruce is at odds with Ducard and the organization's leader Ra's Al Guhl (Watanabe) when he refuses to execute a farmer accused of murder. This results in the death of Ra's and the League's base being destroyed. Bruce returns home to Gotham City with plans to fight crime under the guise of Batman, a symbol that criminals will fear. He enlists the help of his loyal butler, Alfred (Caine) and Lucius Fox (Freeman), the head of Applied Sciences at his family's company Wayne Enterprises. As Batman fights his way through the city's underworld, he soon learns the League of Shadows may still be active and that they may have big plans for Gotham.
First Impressions:
I saw this one in theaters when it was released in 2005, and I was pretty pleased with it. As a movie franchise, Batman was in a bad place at the time, given the trailer fire that was the Schumacher era. The series had become a campy, ridiculous mess designed merely to sell toys and had become a bit of a laughing stock. However, director Christopher Nolan changed everything by bringing an edge back to the character and his world. Much like its predecessor in 1989, which showed the world that superhero movies could be successful, Batman Begins showed the world that not only could they be successful, but they also could be quality films to boot.
Story/Direction:
"It's not who I am underneath...but what I *do*... that defines me."
I'm going to state right off the bat that I'm not a very big fan of Christopher Nolan's films. I find they tend to be plodding, poorly paced, with necessarily convoluted plots. However, there are a few exceptions, and Batman Begins is one of them. In taking on this film, Nolan had a monumental task in front of him. There had been Batman films produced before this film, and they had progressively gotten worse with each successive outing to the point that its viability as a movie franchise was in question. However, Nolan took up the challenge and gave us a great film. The story is grounded but at the same time has a comic-book outlandishness that keeps the movie from taking itself too seriously (an issue that future Batman films suffer from). We have to remember that while Batman is among the darkest and most serious comic-book heroes out there, it's still a story about a man who dresses up as a bat and beats the crap out of criminals. For the most part, I think Nolan finds a good balance between the severeness of the character and the silliness of the premise.
The theme of the film, or at least the one I pulled from it, is the line between vengeance and justice. While I love the character of Batman, to me, he's always been a cautionary tale in the world of superheroes. He's what happens when someone lets their need for revenge consume and take over them. But, of course, that's one of the reasons the character has been so appealing for nearly a century. The thing I find interesting about Batman is that he's self-aware enough to know that vengeance has consumed him, and he keeps himself in check by ensuring that he never, ever kills. He keeps this rule because he knows that if broken, he becomes what he hates most and then there's no turning back. In my earlier review of Tim Burton's Batman, I lamented that the film ignored this key trait of the character, and it was one of the things that kind of tarnished the movie for me. Fortunately, Nolan heeded the source material and kept Batman's "one rule" intact.
Like most Nolan films, this is a long movie (2 hours 20 minutes runtime); however, it's paced pretty well. One of the primary reasons for this, I think, is that it's a retelling of the origins of a character that everyone - even non-comics fans - is familiar with. In the first act, Nolan uses flashbacks to set up characters and establish Bruce's state of mind and how he came to be where he is. It's deftly handled, and I wish more films and TV would make better use of the flashback (I'm looking at you, Book of Boba Fett). Still, overall, it's a good story and well-told, which is all you can really ask.
Let's get things started with the Dark Knight himself, played by Christian Bale. Bale is a terrific actor, but he's not my favorite Batman. He certainly has the intensity to play the Caped Crusader, and he's charming enough to pull off the billionaire playboy, but the voice he used for Batman was just not good. Actors who played the role previously would take a subtle approach and just lower their voices a bit and maybe throw a slight rasp in there (except Clooney but the less said about that movie, the better). On the other hand, Bale throws subtlety out the window and goes for a loud, gravely barking tone that makes him sound like a chihuahua that just huffed a bunch of sulfur hexafluoride. Fortunately, Batman is laconic by nature, so it doesn't completely ruin the performance, but it did take away from it a bit.
Liam Neeson plays Ducard, Bruce's former trainer and primary antagonist. Neeson plays the role with calm confidence. Ducard is a terrific villain not because he's evil (he is) but because he thinks he's doing good. He's a true believer in what the League of Shadows is doing and will go to any lengths to realize the organization's goals. It's an excellent performance and one that was the springboard of Neeson's late-career foray into the action genre.
The rest of the cast is mostly excellent. Gary Oldman doles out another outstanding performance as Sgt. Gordon the only good cop in a dirty town. Cillian Murphy is suitably creepy as Dr. Johnathan Crane (aka. The Scarecrow), the film's secondary antagonist. Morgan Freeman is terrific, as Lucius Fox and Rutger Hauer pops in as Mr. Earle, the erstwhile CEO of Wayne Enterprises. The only real issue I had with the cast was Katie Holmes as Bruce's love interest Rachel Dawes, mostly because she's kind of just...there and doesn't do a hell of a lot.
Visual/Special Effects:
The special effects in this film are all pretty good, and since most of the significant effects scenes take place at night, any sketchy VFX was masked somewhat by the dark lighting. That being said, there weren't a lot of inadequate effects, at least that I could see. There are a couple of big sequences, including a collapsing train bridge and other explosive effects, which all look good. Nolan also uses some pretty trippy camera effects to show off the effects of Scarecrow's fear toxin, which work very well.
The film is very noir and takes place mostly at night in terms of visual style. For the scenes during the day, Nolan uses a muted color palette to show that Gotham is in a state of perpetual cloudiness. Unlike Burton, Nolan didn't opt to build an entire downtown core for Gotham from scratch and instead just used downtown Chicago, which works because that's about as close to Gothan in real life as we're gonna get.
Score/Music:
James Newton Howard and Han Zimmer combined on the score for this movie, and that's a pretty solid pairing as both have a tremendous track record in film. The score makes heavy use of deep string sounds at a fast pace, giving the film a fair amount of urgency, which works really well. It's not the type of score that I catch myself humming, and, honestly, I don't find any particular theme that memorable, but it's still a really good score that gels well with the action on the screen.
Action:
Speaking of action, if there's one area where this film drops the ball, it's the action. Don't get me wrong, there are some pretty cool action sequences, such as the aforementioned train derailment, as well as an outstanding car chase involving the Batmobile. However, it's the fight scenes that really made me sad. Nolan is a good visual director, but he can't shoot a fight scene for shit. He makes use of the too-often used quick cut, jerking style that permeated action films of the era, and it makes it difficult to follow what happens. It's also nauseating. To me, a fight scene in a movie is like a dance sequence, and it's best viewed when the audience can clearly see and admire what the actors and stuntmen are doing.
Final Verdict:
This film still holds up for me. In fact, it's still my favorite film in the Nolan Batman trilogy. I'd certainly give a recommendation, but I get the feeling that anybody that would be interested in seeing it has already seen it.
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