This could be the beginning of a great relationship...

Rating: 7/10 (22 June 2005)

Warning: There are no major spoilers and is on par with an average review, but I recognize this film has been hotly anticipated by many and some may want a completely pure experience. They are recommended to read this review after seeing the film.
Batman Begins is an enjoyable enough piece of smart popcorn, and it succeeds in making Batman dark, someone who, even compared to the clean-cut Superman, has somehow been considered by many "silly" instead of "troubled" or "three-dimensional". This is probably because of the '60s show starring Adam West (I've noticed hipsters love referencing this show, probably because they think they're being ironic). Joel Schumacher's last two lousy Batman films didn't help either. Thankfully director Christopher Nolan decides to play it straight with Batman Begins. And you know what? I think it's the best thing to happen to the character since Tim Burton was around.
The film basically explains how Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) came to be Batman, something that was supposedly sort of glossed over in the comics. Having not read them since I was about five years old, I can't say if this is true or not. But I do know that the guy who kills his parents has changed from the original Batman film and is now just a petty criminal. It was actually kind of interesting how Nolan suggests the rampant crime in Gotham City is related to its poverty. Still, it's irritating it took more than an hour to explain that Bruce Wayne is concerned about crime because his parents were killed. Well, yeah.
The film picks up with Bruce Wayne/Batman in an Asian prison when he is retrieved by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). Ducard's intentions are to mold Wayne into a member of the ragtag radical organization The League of Shadows through training. Now, normally, the neat getting to know-my-powers sequences are my favorite parts of any superhero movie, but not so here. The training sequences are mainly the two fighting with swords while Ducard floats between sounding like a Sith lord or ripping off the Matrix. Also, I have a few choice words for whoever edited the fight scenes. Like, "What was the point in doing that?" The headache-inducing fight scenes are cut so each shot is maybe a second long. So it's difficult to just to figure out what's going on. Anyways, the leader Ra's Al Ghul (a sadly underused Ken Watanabe) is impressed and Bruce Wayne is told if he kills a murderer in front of him he will be accepted. He takes the highway, which is just as well because The League of Shadows were going to destroy Gotham City anyways. Apparently, they also burned London and started the Plague, which is kind of silly but I'm starting to nitpick.
This is where the second and my favorite part of the film comes into play. Except for a rushed romance with Wayne's childhood friend, played by Katie Holmes, there's a lot to like. The unusually classy cast also is used more in the second part. Gotham crime lord Carmine Falcone is played by Tom Wilkinson, Morgan Freeman is Bruce Wayne's weapons inventor Lucius Fox, an also underused Rutger Hauer plays a soul-sucking executive at Wayne Corporations, and Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is one of the good cops on hand. And it introduces the second villain Scarecrow, played frighteningly (and oh so dreamy) by Cilian Murphy.
Aside from getting the general idea right, there are a number of nice touches on Christopher Nolan's part. For one, the Batmobile. While the Batmobiles in the past have been sleek black convertibles, this one looks like a mix between a Humvee and a tank, with big tires. The Batcave isn't some high-tech lab, it's really just a cave. And when the Scarecrow starts to hallucinate, Batman appears to him as a gargoyle with worms dribbling from his mouth. It all ties in to the ending, which neatly hints at possibilities to a Batman Begins franchise. From what Christopher Nolan displays here, I have no objections.