Short version: See it.
Longer version: Batman Begins continues the recent tradition of comic book superhero movies using the first film to tell the character’s origin story. But while other movies (Spider-Man, Blade, Hellboy, yeah, I’m looking at you, Hulk, well, I got not clue not having seen the crapper) depend on some fantastic or supernatural explanation, writers David Goyer (who also wrote Blade) and Christopher Nolan (who directed this one, having previously written and directed the much more intellectual Memento and Hollywood version of Insomnia) provide engineering support barely out of the reach of current military development for Batman’s entire array of equipment. Though it doesn’t hurt that Bruce Wayne is one of the wealthiest men in the film’s corporate America to justify his access to it.
Acting: We saw this with the Big Guy and walking out he wondered whether the acting or the script was more responsible for our mutually agreed assessments. Then he said that almost certainly it’s a six of one, half dozen of the other situation. Beside Christian Bale as the Bat, the cast is full of good names: Morgan Freeman as the tech supplier, Michael Caine as Alfred, Cillian Murphy as the psychotic psychiatrist, Gary Oldman as Gordon the copper, Liam Neeson as the leader of the League of Shadows (I can’t say if his character is good or evil but he does drive the plot), Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, Rade Serbedzija and, of course, Tom Cruise’s fiance.
That last quip also points to one of the movie’s weakest points, the almost pitiful attempt at a romantic component. As if the studio execs said to Nolan that he needs to stick something in to give female viewers an extra hook except that in thiscase the hook landed in someone’s lip. The last conversation between Wayne and Katie Holmes’ Rachel Dawes was especially pitiful as it was almost an exact lift from the cematery scene between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in the first Spider-Man.
Fortunately that’s just about the only such conversation. The pair’s other (adult) conversations are concerned with the main plot; the closest they come to such gushy feelings is their confrontation outside Wilkinson’s hang out that launches Bruce Wayne on the path to becoming the Caped Crusader.
For a change, this is also a big Summer action flick that doesn’t depend so heavily on computer generated special effects that the computer programmers are more important than the actors (Revenge of the Sith, this time I’m looking at you). Not that special effects are bad IMO but they need to be used to help tell the story and not in place of one (Sky Captain and many others). Nolan and Goyer take us from A to B to C simply and clearly without asking us to unreasonably suspend our disbelief.
definitely recommended–could be this year’s Bourne Identity or Spider-Man.
BillSaysThis 