Like a breath of fresh-air.......

Rating: 8/10 (28 September 2005)

Batman Begins is that Batman movie that we've all been waiting for, but believed impossible due to its ridiculous predecessors. Though, to be fair, the camp-factor was always present in the franchise, right from the days of the serial. Only the first movie attempted to be something different, but that was quickly drowned beneath awful camped-up scripts and dreadful over-acting, along with actors who really should have known better than to take part in the ongoing farce that was the franchise.
So we come to the latest (and, in my humble opinion, by far the best) movie to date.
Batman Begins is so different from its predecessors as to be almost a completely different story. Oh sure, we have Batman, Alfred, all the gadgets etc. but the way the story unfolds is just a treat. Everything is explained nicely. Gone are the childishly simple "Bruce Wayne is rich, so that's how he gets all his gadgets" ploys and we get an in-depth look into the back history of Bruce, how he gets his fighting skills, where the gadgets originate from, and much, much more. In short, from being a one-dimensional superhero, Nolan has given us a character that we can relate to, understand, and in some senses, pity.
But Nolan didn't stop with the character humanizing. Gone also are the equally one-dimensional bad-guys. Now they too have reasons for what they do. No more Danny de Vito in an "even-fatter" suit making awful quacking noises. They even have a little bit of menace about them, rather than being parodies with all the fright-factor of Ronald McDonald.
And there's more. Gotham is no longer the Victorian-architectural nightmare of the previous movies. Nolan has taken the "Goth" out of "Gotham". Now it is a modern (and far more believable) city, with only a few tiny "goth" bits here and there, like the overhead monorail. A vast improvement over the unrelateable pseudo-1800's structures of past efforts.
And the story.....yes! There is one! Mostly it deals with Bruce's transformation into Batman, but it is nice to see it done so well. The movie never feels rushed. You never think "Wait...how did he go from that, to that?" All is paced very well.
That's not to say there aren't minor niggles. But they are minor. The violence is still very cartoon-like. Few badguy henchmen ever seem to be killed, just knocked-out. And there are some schlocky camp moments here and there (the "Bat back-up" scene for example). But on the whole the movie satisfies in a way that none of the previous materiel ever has.
The casting choices also seem spot-on. Everyone gives a sound performance and Bale is clearly the perfect choice for the Caped Crusader. He has that brooding presence that none of the others really had. Gary Oldman as the cop was also a pleasant surprise. His performance here as an out-of-his-depth-but-getting-on-with-it policeman was a far cry from some of his campier, overacting roles. Very subtle indeed.
In summary, Batman Begins is that rare commodity, an Nth sequel that surpasses all its predecessors, and by a long margin. This is Batman for adults. It's dark, it's gritty and far more believable (A term I wouldn't normally use in reviewing a superhero movie) and it deserves to do very well indeed.
If nothing else, it has certainly revived the franchise from the near-death coma it was in and sent it skipping and dancing through the Hollywood emergency ward. A sequel to this sequel is an inevitability at this point. And that is one movie I WILL look forward to watching when it arrives.