The Dark Knight Begins

Rating: 9/10 (20 July 2008)

***Written on 18 July 2008***
Before today I haven't watch the first Batman film of Christopher Nolan since its theatrical release, back in summer 2005, and I really enjoyed it a lot at the time, becoming my favourite Batman film since the second and final take of Tim Burton on the legendary comic book superhero, created by Bob Kane.Yesterday I decided to get my tickets for the midnight opening of Nolan's second take on Batman and I really had desires to re-watch Batman Begins before midnight to get in the mood yet I couldn't watched it and actually after watching The Dark Knight I woke up today with more desires to finally watch again this film for the first time since 2005 and I finally did it and I'm glad I did it.
We have and we are going to watch three important things of Bruce Wayne's life and by watching two of them we can also and of course watch two important times in the history of Gotham City that are, unfortunately, quite different from each other. The tragic story of Bruce's parents is a relevant part not only in Bruce's life but also in the history of Gotham City itself and seven years after of the release of Joe Chill, murderer of Bruce's parents, Bruce is back after a unique training (a very effective "introduction" to the character of Batman and is a really great part of the film, mixing that training with the childhood of Bruce) but it is more appropriate to say that here Batman begins
I think that Christian Bale is the best Batman by comparing him with Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney and this time he plays perfect his role as the full-time party man Bruce Wayne. For the first time in the films, the character Lucius Fox appears (played by Morgan Freeman) and he is the one who supply all the equipment of Batman and together with Alfred (this time played -in a good way- by Michael Caine) they will carry with the humour parts of the film. But those are just support characters that are relevant in Bruce Wayne's life yet and of course are not part of the possible destruction of Gotham City.
If there are something quite better than Batman and than any other superheroes are their enemies, of course, and definitely the Scarecrow is a great one and with his medicine he will have some terrific scenes but ironically the best of these scenes is when Batman makes that the Scarecrow takes a bit of his own medicine. Yet he was only a puppet and his final appearance in this film is quite a disappointing way to defeat the Scarecrow, courtesy of the weakest character in the film, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes).
Then this is a great Batman film, darker, with an effective background story that eventually will be part of the new problem in Gotham City, courtesy of Ra's al Ghul and with a magnificent ending that was just the beginning of today's hype for an enemy. 9.5 out of 10