Bob Kane and Frank Miller would be proud

Rating: 8/10 (18 June 2005)

I don't worry and obsess too much about 'superhero' flicks. I just expect them to suck and take what enjoyment I can from them. So the relatively high quality and watch-ability of "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" was a great surprise to me, since I had fully expected them both to be lame, camp, and stupid. But instead, both flicks were well made films with warmth, dignity and humor, as well as being pleasant tributes to the memories of decades of entertaining stories and the comic book creators who made them.
"Batman Begins" continues this great tradition. It manages to include almost everything the fans love about the character and his alter ego - the cape, the gadgets, the Bat-Mobile (more of a Bat-Tank, but still), the urban backdrop, the disturbed and disturbing villains. And it does all this while still being a crackerjack movie - the quality of the production, the acting, the soundtrack and the cinematography are Sky high.
What's really wonderful about this version of Batman is that there are some major Hollywood actors involved in this, but every one of them treats the material with gravitas and respect. But at the same time, no one chews the scenery or over-does the drama. Neeson and Caine are especially great in this respect. No one can instill dignity and humanity into a potentially silly or goofy scene like Neeson.(Hell, he almost saved 'Episode One' all by himself.) Here, he just punches the humanity and also 'larger than life' quality of the proceedings into the next level. And Micheal Caine is, well, Micheal Caine. He's effortlessly wonderful as Alfred, as good in his way as Micheal Gough was in the previous versions of the franchise.
I think it is obvious that while Tim Burton is a wonderful, whacked out visionary (and God Bless him for it), Nolan is in fact a better director for this more naturalistic material.
I was very pleased to learn that Christian Bale would be the new "Batman" - after watching him in "American Psycho" and in "Equilibrium", I was pretty sure that he would have just the right qualities for the part - he's built like a brick, and he's got the 1000-yard stare and the 'lights are on, but nobody's home' qualities that the character demands. And man, he is good in this. Micheal Keaton is a wonderful actor, but Bale seems to have been BORN to play Batman.
I can't give this a perfect '10', because it's a superhero flick, for crying out loud. I save '10' for stuff like 'Bambi' and 'Deliverance'. But this is really, really, really good.