THE best superhero movie ever made !! Its almost perfect.

Rating: 8/10 (24 June 2005)

Few movies ever meet the expectations you may have about them given their premise and the talents of the people associated with them. And there are only a handful of movies that exceed your expectations. Batman Begins is one of those movies that will far exceed your expectations and give you even more. Right from the opening sequence when the young Bruce Wayne encounters the bats for the first time until the final showdown in downtown Gotham I was completely blown away by what I saw on the screen. This is the story about the dangerous and painful journey that Bruce Wayne takes to become Batman and it is as dark and haunting as a Batman movie should be.
The story starts off with Bruce(Christian Bale) living the life of a petty criminal in a far east Asian country (looks like Mongolia but is not mentioned). It is explained that he is doing that to study and experience the mind of a criminal in a land where no one knows him as the heir to Wayne enterprises. Here he meets Ducard(Liam Neeson) who recognizes him and after hearing his story decides to train him in the martial arts. The training sequences are fascinating to watch and are given ample time by the director unlike other movies where such scenes are just summarized into fade-in / fade-out shots with background music. It reminded me of Uma Thurman's training sequence in Kill Bill. Its amazing how paying attention to such simple details make or break a movie. There is a cameo by Ken Watanabe (Last Samurai) as the chief of the Shadow Ninja warriors with whom Bruce trains.
Next stop Gotham.
The shots of Gotham city are unlike what you have ever seen before. No crazy neon lights or huge statues or crazy looking towers as in the previous Batman versions. This is a Gotham of the real world. There are skyscrapers and there are the slums. The bird's eye-view shots of the city are unbelievable from a cinematographic POV but very believable from a realistic POV (since most of it is CGI).
The next stage in his journey (after the training) is logistics and equipment. Wayne enterprises' in-house scientist Lucius Fox (Freeman) introduces Bruce Wayne to the Bat-Suit , the Bat-Cape and of course the Bat-Mobile !! And what a machine that is. A real military armored vehicle that looks like a cross between a tank and a sports car. Watching this thing move is worth the price of the ticket (Does it come in black ???).
Of course Batman needs a girlfriend and there is Katie Holmes who looks very cute. Many people have pointed out that she is too young and nice to play a District Attorney. (Well would you prefer Amanda Peet who always plays a hard-ass beeyatch ?) Katie does a great job in her role as a DA who's fighting to get the Mafia thugs behind bars. I mentioned in my heading that the movie is almost perfect. It could have been perfect if not for a miscast. The mafia boss is played by Tom Wilkinson who tries to put on a fake American-Italian accent and doesn't even look like one. Even Joe Pesci could have done a better job. Not that Wilkinson's a bad actor ,its just that you don't get a Brit to play Tony Soprano.Anyway, aside from that the movie is perfect.
All that was what I saw on the screen. But one of the best things in this movie was the background score. Never has the music been so integrated into the movie as you hear here. It is haunting , grand and moving all at the same time. It complements the main character wonderfully. Bruce Wayne is very tortured in his mind and his struggle with himself is very moving. And Batman is a very haunting , frightening figure (not the nice guy portrayed by Clooney and others).
The cinematography is excellent (note the shots of the mountains in Mongolia). One of the most astonishing shots in the movie is when Bruce Wayne goes into the cave and turns on the flashlight waking up the thousands of bats that completely engulf him and the cave. Almost as fantastic as the Sentinals attack in Matrix Revolutions. The acting is top notch (Bale, it seems was born to play Batman) and the direction is just what you hope from some of the great directors , and Nolan has proved himself to be one. The audience in the theater clapped at the end of the movie which proved that this is not just for the die-hard Batman fans.
If you decide to see just one movie this summer or even this year , skip StarWars 3 , skip War of the Worlds, GO SEE BATMAN BEGINS.