One More Time to the Bat-Well

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 2005)

Batman Begins is supposed to represent the re-vitalization of the dormant Batman film franchise, begun by Warner Bros. and Tim Burton in 1989, but the movie doesn't breathe new life into the series so much as squeeze the last drop out of it. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like, if your intention is to resurrect a moribund proposition like the Batman movies, the first thing you might want to do is hire a director who has some sense of what makes a movie exciting, instead of someone like Christopher Nolan, who has an unfortunate propensity to create frictionless, Teflon-like exercises, movies that feel all of a piece, and never generate the kind of ebb and flow that makes for satisfying viewing (we forgave him for Memento because it was so bold narratively, but let's be honest, that movie never quite came to life either). And the next thing you might want to do, it seems to me, is hire an actor to play Batman who doesn't give you the impression that he'd rather be in some S&M dungeon somewhere having horrendous things done to him by women in vinyl suits than out on the streets saving Gotham. In other words, if what you want is to shoot some electricity through a flatlined enterprise, you might consider putting said operation in the hands of people who demonstrate more clearly that they themselves have a pulse.
The story takes us back to the origins of Batman - all the way back to when Bruce Wayne was a strapping lad spending a care-free youth at Stately Wayne Manor, only to have his childhood cut hideously short by the murders of his glowingly philanthropic parents; then to his days as an angry-young-man searching for an identity amongst cut-throats and thieves in some of the biggest crapholes on the face of the earth. In Nepal (or thereabouts) Wayne (Christian Bale) lands himself in prison; here he demonstrates enough toughness and rudimentary fighting skill to impress a Ninja master played by Liam Neeson (?), who takes Wayne under his wing, and teaches him everything he will ever need to know to one day become the Caped Crusader (how to sneak, and act real mysterious and stuff). After a rather nasty parting-of-ways with the secret Ninja Society, Wayne returns to Gotham, which is a hellhole of urban decay, crime and architectural eclecticism. Rather than spend his days as a playboy, Wayne decides he'll put his Ninja training to use by becoming a crusader for peace and justice who happens to dress up like a bat. No sooner does the newly-minted Batman, armed with discarded military hardware from Wayne Enterprises' basement, begin fighting crime than a bizarre plot to poison the city emerges, a scheme involving a mob kingpin (Tom Wilkinson), a psychiatrist with questionable methods (Cillian Murphy) and a stolen microwave emitter.
Director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale seem oddly made for each other; neither one really ever lets you inside what they're doing, but expect you to be impressed by their surface effects. Bale has this vampiric quality, this pallid, bloodless deathliness that must seem incredibly sexy to people who are into wearing Halloween costumes all year long, but from an acting perspective doesn't amount to anything worth watching. Bale's characters never seem to rise to a human level; at best the actor seems like half a person, which is fine if you're playing a primitive like in American Psycho, but isn't really satisfactory for a supposedly complex character like Bruce Wayne/Batman. Bale's playing two characters who barely amount to one. As Bruce Wayne he is charmless and vaguely creepy, nothing like the keyed-up Wayne of Michael Keaton; and as Batman he is barely present. Nolan and Bale seem to have taken literally this idea of Batman as a kind of wraith, a criminal-haunting bogeyman, but by doing so they've robbed the character of his humor, his personality. When Keaton uttered that now-famous, "I'm Batman," in the 1989 installment it was a classic moment, at once thrilling and hilarious, but when Bale reprises it there's just a thud. Tim Burton, the director of the original Batman, has a showman's flair to go with all his quirks and pre-occupations; he makes images that ring with the fun of making movies, and he creates characters who revel in their craziness even as they suffer. Christopher Nolan's images have no ring to them; they're oddly clean images, impeccably composed but bereft of esprit, and they seem to crowd each other like logs in a jam, canceling out any sense of narrative pull. Burton's movies build in momentum, one image after another, but Batman Begins just unfurls at the same unvarying pace, its surface glassy and impenetrable. There's no way into Batman Begins; one watches it with half-interest, vaguely impressed by the visual design but utterly unengaged by the action. Nolan never lets you beyond the surface, never finds the hooks that pull you deeper into the neatly-plotted story; and Bale never convinces you that you should care about Bruce Wayne/Batman's struggles, his identity issues.
The supporting characters have more spunk, more heart than Wayne/Batman/Bale. Cillian Murphy has a fine-old-time as the devious, ethically challenged Dr. Crane; there's a spark of comic book villainy to Murphy's performance, a little hint of what Nicholson brought to the first Batman, and Danny DeVito to the second. As Wayne's loyal butler Alfred Michael Caine is warm and cheerful, dispelling some of the movie's relentless gloom; and the same can be said for Morgan Freeman as a Wayne Enterprises employee who helps Batman procure his toys. Murphy, Caine and Freeman are all more legitimate performers than Bale, whose acting seems to be built purely upon physicality (he's got big muscles in this movie), and not the ability to engage an audience. You know you're in trouble when your (Not Yet) Commissioner Gordon (played to the last frazzled nerve by Gary Oldman) is more interesting than your Batman.