Batman de-mystified. Not necessarily the tour de force some critics are calling it

Rating: 7/10 (19 June 2005)

I liked this movie. Christian Bale. as many others will tell you. seems a perfect fit for the role. The supporting cast, while not having a Jack Nicholson, are very impressive and perform as expected. I don't see this film as better than the 1989 version though. Just as Batman is now shown to have more realism and humanity as a fully fleshed out character, so are the villains. Nobody in this film is larger than life, including Bale, and things seem to be pulled away from the comic book roots. The villains are sort of a lukewarm bunch, not poorly acted, but not particularly scary or menacing and when they get their just desserts, they seem a lot more like just criminals than the personification of evil. And for all the menace of the Batman persona I am not sure I recall seeing a drop of blood except in an early scene involving Bruce Wayne prior to Batman. He is "dark", to be sure, but mostly just knocks out the bad guys or ties them up much like the campy Adam West character. The audience wasn't cheering when the bad guys paid the price, and in fact, nobody seemed to much care. I also found the movie a bit slow to get started, but that might be because I was subconsciously comparing it to Burtons first. I could live with the pace, because the character had to be thoroughly introduced as this will be the first of several new Batman films. BUT to rate better than a 7 with me the bad guys have to actually be EVIL, and Batman has to be willing to want to do more than just arrest people. Michael Keaton was a scarier customer than the new guy, and seemed to me to be truer to the comic book origins.