HAMSTER RATING

SPECS: Christian Bale (Howl’s Moving Castle, American Psycho) as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Michael Caine (Bewitched, Secondhand Lions) as Alfred, Liam Neeson (Kingdom of Heaven, Kinsey) as Ducard, Katie Holmes (First Daughter, Pieces of April) as Rachel Dawes, Gary Oldman (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hannibal) as Jim Gordon, Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later) as Scarecrow/Dr. Jonathan Crane, and Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby, The Big Bounce) as Lucius Fox

Written by Bob Kane (honorary credit as Batman’s daddy), David S. Goyer (The Blade trilogy), and Christopher Nolan (Memento)

Executive Produced by Benjamin Melniker and Michael E. Uslan (the monsters behind Catwoman, who fortunately seem to have learned their lesson)

Directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia)

SYNOPSIS: Young billionaire Bruce Wayne, traumatized by the murder of his parents, goes into self-imposed exile in Asia. There he is trained to majorly kick butt by a shadowy organization managed by Ducard. Finding Ducard and his cronies utter nut-jobs, Bruce torches their dojo and retreats to his hometown of Gotham City, to fight crime as his tortured alter-ego, the Batman. When Ducard suddenly pops up in Gotham, only Batman stands between him and the destruction of Gotham.

REVIEW IN BRIEF: Batman certainly begins here. And it’s about freakin’ time!

NOTABLE: Gary Oldman as Gordon. Once again, he’s taken a character we’ve known for decades and portrayed him exactly as he appears in our imaginations. Gary Oldman is Jim Gordon. Way to go, Gary.

FORGETTABLE: Katie Holmes. It’s partly the role of Rachel Dawes, but mostly her.

REVIEW: Well, we’ve waited patiently for this for eight years. Longer, if you, like most fans, summarily dismissed both Batman Forever and Batman & Robin as campy disasters. A lot longer if you also reject Batman and Batman Returns as run-of-the-mill studio superhero fare, accidentally well executed by Tim Burton. A heck of a lot longer if you can’t stand Adam West’s Batman: The Movie, either.

Well, good news. Our patience has been well rewarded. Fellow Bat-fans, rejoice. Your moody knight in black matte armor has finally arrived.

Batman Begins joins both Spidermans and possibly the first Superman (minus that backwards-earth time travel thing) as one of only four worthwhile superhero movies ever made. This is saying a lot, as one look at the release dates of the movies just mentioned will indicate. Worthwhile superhero movies only come around about once a decade (we’ve been lucky recently). Like comets, you have to be sure to see them when they fly by. Because you might never see one again.

What makes Begins so good? Well…pretty much everything. Fan fawning aside, there is little obviously lacking in this film. The story is concise and coherent. Characterizations are clear and plausible (and in line with the comic book). Neither is sacrificed to action or sweeping visuals. Acting and delivery draw no attention to themselves, which is the best a director can hope for. Even the writing is good, a definite rarity in recent Hollywood ventures. People say what people might actually say, and they say it with only a pleasant touch of cinematic dramatis. Begins is a perfect example of how a movie should be made. Not just an action or superhero movie – any movie, independent, Hollywood, or Bollywood. Directors of the world, take note.

[For content analysis, please refer to the last four paragraphs of the HISTORY]

So what are the problems? Every movie has a few, even the rare good ones. There are only two that rear up during the initial viewing of Begins, and one of these is stylistic. The non-stylistic problem is with the sheer number of characters involved. There are six characters who could arguably be called leads, five of them forced to divide the remaining third of the movie not dominated by Batman/Bruce Wayne. Chris Nolan generally pulls it off, giving the 2 hr, 20 min movie a much shorter feel. But sometimes things do seem a little too back-and-forth, especially during the action sequences. As if ticking down a list, every character gets an obligatory cameo at each major plot point. This isn’t an ensemble movie – it’s supposed to be about Batman. Were three major villains really necessary? Probably not. Nolan probably should have thinned out the herd in editing.

The stylistic problem comes in Nolan’s filming of the hand-to-hand combat. Apparently he wanted to create a feeling of close-quarters, which makes sense in a Batman movie – the character relies on stealth and skill in combat instead of superpowers. But it doesn’t work as well as he probably intended. Often this just generates confusion about what is actually going on, who’s hitting who, and who is in fact winning the fight. This gradually gets worse as most of the fights begin taking place at night or in half-light, and most of the fighters suddenly begin wearing similar black outfits. Granted, we know Batman is going to somehow win every fight he gets into. But part of the fun is seeing how he does it. Intense close-ups may work in still comic frames, but rarely do in movies.

Noland is not an action director. But he is a director, and knows his craft. Fortunately, he has managed to adapt his subtler style to a genre and franchise in desperate need of subtlety. The result is in a word, extraordinary. Batman has always been an extraordinary superhero, and its fulfilling to see him finally get the movie he has always deserved.

Can’t wait for the sequel.