Batman is finally cool.

Rating: 8/10 (18 June 2005)

I tip my hat to both the cast and crew of Batman Begins. Encore! I couldn't help but smile after leaving the theater 18 dollars poorer. (No, that's not the price of one ticket, but two.) Chris Nolan and his creative crew members excelled on several fronts to make this movie as pleasing as it was. Several raters mentioned the realism that was captured in the development of Bruce Wayne alongside with the setting Gotham City and the characterization of its denizens. I agree with them. Nelson's creation of Gotham City seemed real. Not "documentary" real, but real as in "what was portrayed seemed feasible with our technology." I could picture Nelson's Batman in contemporary New York City.
To begin with, I was never a Batman fan. I remember throughout childhood I would always tease those in favor of him rather than other superhero characters. Whenever friends listed the top ten characters, listing batman never even entered my psyche. I was traumatized by the classic TV show batman wearing such awful blue/grey spandex. What further traumatized me were the batman movies following Burton's masterpiece. I just could not connect. Finally after 20 years of bias against Bruce Wayne, I felt a shift in taste. Today batman suddenly became cool and likable. I felt his pain, I felt his anger, I felt his motivations. He became more hero than superhero because he felt real.
There were several moments in the film that were handled with sensible variety rather than with lame predictability. For example, the dialogue scenes where a few characters ask Batman, "Who are you?", were moments where I clenched my teeth saying to myself, "Please don't say 'Batman.' If you say that, I'll get up and leave." Luckily for me, Nelson wisely chose to vary Batman's response whereby not sounding childish.
But with most movies, there are idiosyncrasies that I scoff. For this movie, there were two slightly distracting parts. One was Ken Watinabe's performance and appearance. He was a fighting clichÃ©: sage-like beard and incomprehensible Asian-like speech (it sure wasn't Japanese). I was not bothered by his broken English (which i actually admired about in Last Samurai), but his foreign dialogue was just laughable. Also that catfish-like beard is intolerable. It's overdone.
Another distraction was the last train fight sequence. Parallels between Spiderman 2 and this just couldn't stop popping into my head. Was I watching batman or was I watching spiderman? They were so similar that I just kept reminding me it's not Spidey fighting Doc Oc, but batman kicking ass. Great scene though.
All in all, I give this my stamp of approval. I was simply entertained.
P.S. Batman is now on my top 10 superhero list.