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Christian Bale is very impressive in his inaugural outing as Batman in this prequel to the earlier movies. Thankfully, he
fills his role with a heft and a gravitas that matches that of his costars.
Needless to say, he has a lot of competition with the inspired casting that was done for this film. Liam Neeson, Michael
Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman are all so good as screen presences that they must possess gravitas and charisma even
when they get out of bed in the morning. It just comes with their outsized personalities.
So the great pleasure in this Batman movie is that its hero has the same high level of screen charisma as do his friends
and his enemies. After the weak leading men thrust on us in the late Star Wars movies along with far too many other films
with similarly weak male leads, this is a high compliment indeed.
So, my kudos for the superlative casting which has been done with such special care and ends up being a delight all the
way around.
Katie Holmes, who has been so much in the news lately for other reasons, shows us that she is a talented actress in a
more mature role than her earlier very fine efforts in "Pieces of April" and "Wonder Boys." Here she is
very gutsy and very good.
Liam Neeson is well cast in his role as an Occidental leader of a mysterious "Shadow League" of super cops who
assume the role of high executioners when the urban areas of the world go off the deep end into a morass of immorality.
Michael Caine is an added delight in his wry role as Bruce Wayne's long time family butler and now Batman's new confidante.
Sure, this is a lightweight role for him, but what a pleasure to see him on the screen just relishing his wonderful role!
Tom Wilkinson is one of the foremost British actors but he is little known here in spite of his considerable talents.
I have admired him for some time and he rose even more in my esteem for his indelible portrayal of a distraught father in
the powerful 2001 movie, "In the Bedroom," which was nominated for multiple Oscars. Here he plays a villain, Carmine
Falcone, with a ferocious intensity lurking just beneath the surface. In this respect, that anger is similar to that which
he had earlier depicted as the father who has lost his beloved son and now fears that the killer will walk.
Rutger Hauer plays the new head of Wayne Industries, the source of the Wayne family fortune, with a suitably smarmy manner.
Not downright sleazy, but rather with an ill disguised condescension from a man who is used to holding all the cards. And
Cillian Murphy plays the demented Dr. Jonathan Crane with a cerebral coolness that matches his cold blue eyes, a coolness
which is only magnified and enhanced by his choice of eye glasses.
A great musical score can elevate a mediocre movie to one of interest and a good movie to a memorable one, which is the
case here with "Batman Begins." The rousing score by Hans Zimmer, who also scored "Gladiator," "Shark
Tale" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," perfectly projects the dark theme of this noir Caped Crusader caper.
My major complaint with "Batman Begins" is with the fight scenes. They all look fake, even the ones before Bruce
Wayne dons his Batman costume.
We can all pretty much assume that Batman would find it difficult to display any great agility when wrapped in layers
of mesh and neoprene, so we allow Batman the use of technological tools and the element of surprise. And also fear, which
is put forth by Batman in this film as a major psychological weapon in his fight to rid Gotham City of its thriving underworld.
But I can only cut Batman so much slack in this department and I cut Bruce Wayne even less in the several fight scenes
that take place either in a Chinese prison or later while he was being trained in martial arts at the isolated mountain top
temple headquarters of the "Shadow League."
In every instance the the filming of the fight scenes is sped up and the camera moves close in to the action, both of
which lead to a blurring of the fight scenes and their blending into a confusing mess of dark visual savagery with fists and
weapons flying every which way.
This might have worked before martial arts films became mainstream cinema fare, but not any more. We have seen far too
many wondrous scenes of martial combat in both slow and fast motion to the point that we have come to expect highly skilled
and highly choreographed fight scenes so that we can then observe them as poetry in motion.
Director Christopher Nolan presents us with indistinguishable shapes flying around with only enhanced sound effects providing
any clarity. This is unforgivable in my book, for this is what stunt doubles are for if the actors can't cut it.
Otherwise Nolan moves this story along in a very captivating manner (with the exception of the aforementioned) fight scenes.
Well, I could have expected as much as he is a very gifted story teller. Besides co-writing the screenplay for this film along
with David S. Goyer, Nolan has directed some of the very best films of the last five years, including "Insomnia"
in 2002 and "Memento" in 2000. He's very good and so is "Batman Begins."
Back to the movie. The Shadow League is composed of members skilled in combat of all kinds who are sworn to defend the
world against injustice and right now Gotham City is in their cross hairs. It is not without purpose that one of their leaders,
Ducard (Liam Neeson), selects Bruce Wayne to join their group after he has gone on a world wide, decades long funk for the
senseless murder of his parents many years before.
Ducard rescues Wayne from a presumed Chinese prison and invites him to pick a blue flower growing near the glaciers and
carry it up to the mountain top fortress. Wayne, having little else to live for since he blames himself for the murder of
his mother and father, is only too happy to accept this challenge.
Soon a top contender as a most talented fighter, Bruce Wayne is then forced to meet that which he fears most, that primal
fears that lurk within his soul. In this case it is his acceptance of the blame for the murder of his parents outside an opera
house where the family had been watching "Die Fledermaus," a delightful comic opera scored by Johan Strauss, Jr.
Earlier in his young life Bruce Wayne had fallen down an unused well on his family's palatial estate. That well penetrated
a deeper cave home to a bat colony and he lay there helplessly in the dark while thousands of bats milled around. Understandably
psychologically damaged by this experience, he has had an abnormal fear of bats ever since. Even "bats" flitting
around in a comic opera. He begged his parents to leave right in the middle of the opera and thus they were the only people
outside the exit doors when they were accosted by an armed petty thief.
So Wayne at a distant retreat high in the Himalayan Mountains decides to adopt the bat as his sign not only as a way for
him to conquer his own primordial fears but also because his plan is to instill this same instinctive fear in others.
What better symbol could he have devised than this one which is so perfect for the dark streets of Gotham City?
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