What an excellent movie

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2005)

I thought this movie was pretty brilliant, as superhero fair goes. It was able to balance between the fantastic and the realistic excellently. Katie Holmes managed to be a heroine who needed saving, showed the hero its path, and was also able to save herself. That is rare. The directing was excellent, as was the cinematography. It never went overboard on hallucination footage, but also kept the audiences' hearts racing. I am really, really impressed by this movie-- the supporting actors were involving, the plot moved nicely, and it never felt like it was taking too long to set things up (even the very beginning moved nicely.) I felt for Bruce Wayne, and saw him as a flawed hero who seemed human, as opposed to superhuman. All the campy clichés of the comics (which works well in a comic, mind you)-- the Batmobile, the Bat Cave, the Bat Suit were explained and understandable in this film. The bad guys never seemed unbelievable or out of place, nor did Gotham. I can only pray they manage the next movie, and its next villain, as well.