New Beginning

Rating: 9/10 (16 June 2005)

As a longtime fan of the Batman comic I am always glad to hear a new Batman movie. The amazing thing about the Batman character over most other super heroes is that Batman has NO powers. He is just a guy, a rich guy yes, but not super human in any respect. Unlike Superman or most other titans, this guy can be killed and won't come back from the dead, of course the comic brings in new writers and they start another story line parallel for the character.
Which is what Batman Begins is all about, a new take.
I am a big fan of the Tim Burton Batman film. Batman Returns is a good movie, but it didn't work as good and wasn't as much fun as the first film. The Joel Schumacher films pretty much turned it into a ride at Universal Studios Orlando. Batman and Robin was a sad deprecation of a once great character. Bruce Wayne and Batman had only a small cameo in a movie that seemingly tried to fit every Batman villain in the past 30 years into some part.
Thank you David Goyer and Christopher Nolan. Essentially they have turned Batman into a Michael Mann film. Batman Begins is the story about a man who has a tough job to do in a dirty place. He isn't a machine and doesn't live in a video game. We know why he does what he does. For the first time since the first Spiderman, we get an action movie that tells us why the character is in action. The insert scenes of flashbacks of Bruce with his father go a long way in adding up our main character.
Thanks to a beautiful, forceful score from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard the brood of Gotham and the force of the Batman character come to life in a big way.
All the actors in the movie play their necessary parts and because they are all so distinguished, we never question if they are even necessary to the plot, frankly we don't care. All the actors are so good we want to see them on screen and just hang out. It is the same feeling I got when I was a kid watching Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, John Wayne and Walter Brennan sit in a jail and sing just to pass the time in Rio Bravo. Good work by all involved.
Comparisons to the elder Batty film of 1989 will come up. Which one is better? Not sure, I think Nicholson was so dang good as Joker for me its a hard call to see anybody reprising that role. Overall I think both films compliment each other.
Just as legends in history can be told and retold with pieces of the story changing every time, comic book stories that are so well grounded like Batman can be retold.
The band may be different, but the song remains the same.