Exciting new beginning.

Rating: 9/10 (29 June 2005)

I am pleasantly surprised. This isn't "Batman 5"; this is an exciting new beginning for the franchise.
I was never a big fan of the four previous movies. The first was just good and the rest were, frankly, pretty lame. However, this movie rivals both Spiderman movies and surpasses pretty much every movie I've seen this year including Revenge of the Sith. Compared to the villains in this movie, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is at best a "mid-level mechanic" in an organization of Bond style wise guys.
(The only better movie I've seen this year is Crash.)
Well drawn characters, excellent villains and an interesting potential story arc. Dark, edgy and intelligent but more importantly, well thought out. The "evil scheme" of Batman's nemeses slips back a bit, otherwise, every element is fresh and intriguing. Christian Bale is by far the best actor that has played the Batman character. Bale is the real deal. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Katie Holmes and of course the incredible Liam Neeson all blew me away. Freeman brings a light to the movie, Caine brings humanity, Holmes decency and Neeson is focused and profound. How often do you get not one, but five high caliber performances in a single movie? All of these characters support one another and actually make sense! Like the Spiderman series, these are people you care about. However, the villains, they are more intriguing than either of Spiderman's antagonists  one Batman nemesis is probably as complex as David Carradine's 'Snake Charmer' in Kill Bill. (Carradine's being the best movie bad guy that I had seen in a couple of years.)
In the same way that the Spiderman series has succeeded, I hope the sequel to Batman Begins continues to build on its ideas and I hope summer moviegoers realize this isn't "just another Batman movie".