welcome back, batman

Rating: 7/10 (15 June 2005)

After four progressively lamer features from 1989 - 97 with three different stars, and last year's Catwoman fiasco, who would have thought that a Caped-Crusader prequel would rate a blip on the radar (or sonar, for the nocturnal mammals that started it all)? Well sometimes we get pleasant surprises.
Everyone who read the comics or saw any of the movies knows Bruce Wayne/Batman was shaped by the childhood trauma of his parents' death. This film gives us far more detail about those circumstances, the roots of his bat fixation, and his training to emerge as a superhero crime-fighter. I'm not sure how much of this backstory is new material, but it adds up to a fine script from David S. Goyer. About 60% of this 2 ½ hour adventure leads up to Batman's debut.
The guilt-ridden child is mostly raised by butler Alfred (Michael Caine, in his "Cider House Rules" mode). He's a bitter lad, who drops out of college, and keeps a distance from his childhood pal (Katie Holmes), whose grown up to be not only a babe, but an idealistic prosecutor. Bruce disappears for seven years, living on the mean streets before getting super-ninja-type training from a secret organization of crime fighters in Asia. But they're too hard-core, so he returns to Gotham to find a less Draconian way to root out all the evil that disqualifies his city from hosting a Super Bowl or the Miss America Pageant.
Christian Bale masters all the physical and emotional aspects of the dual role. In the scenes covering his relatively shaggy days, he looked so much like Tom Cruise in "The last Samurai" that it may have been confusing for Ms. Holmes (note to self- only get snuggly with the one who's pushing Scientology). Bulking up for this role is particularly impressive, after starving himself to under 120 pounds for the cadaverous look needed for last year's lead in "The Mechanic". Bale must have the world's greatest dietician and trainer to manage such a radical swing.
Morgan Freeman adds a nice dimension, partly by serving as the hero's counterpart to James Bond's gadgetmaster Q. Liam Neeson, Tom Wilkinson and Gary Oldman chip in some fine work. Oldman appears as a young police officer, about the only honest one left on the force, named Gordon. He might be discouraged to think of himself as aging so badly that he'll look like Pat Hingle by the time he becomes Commissioner.
Director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) delivers a franchise-reviving tale by focusing more on character than chaos. Batman's evolution makes more sense than one might expect from a fantasy figure. There's nothing campy about the foes or the action; Cillian Murphy's villain is creepy from understatement - more James Spader than Danny DeVito. Most of the action sequences are less satisfying - too fast, too dark, too many cuts to fully follow who's doing what to whom. But the climactic battle is a marvel of big-budget, computer-generated mayhem. Overall, this film may be the best of the bunch; or maybe Ben Affleck's recent flop in "Daredevil" lowered the bar even further. Either way, the running time passed quickly, and the dangled sequel hook at the end looks tempting.