Terrific

Rating: 9/10 (20 October 2005)

After the death of his parents Bruce Wayne (Bale) decides to rid Gotham City of criminal activity and decides to do this as Batman.
This starts out a little slow, too slow perhaps as we see Bruce Wayne as a child witnessing his parents' murder; then he is an adult climbing a mountain to be trained by some Ninja society that is bent on world domination. Okay, that's enough story. Things get good when Bruce Wayne decides to turn himself into Batman. That is what we were waiting for all the time and this movie doesn't disappoint. It rocks. The cinematography and special effects are outstanding.
Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Rutger Hauer and all the rest of the cast are all very, very good. Liam Neeson is perfect, as always, but I wish he would use the Rob Roy voice more often. What a great voice when he uses it. Maybe I should go see Rob Roy again.
Bales' Batman is perfect and this is not a knock on the previous Batman actors who all did a terrific job. There is one thing I noticed: when Bale has the Batman hood (mask, cowl) on, it compresses his face so much I hardly recognized the Bale character to a degree I almost thought someone else did the Batman close-ups. Maybe that was intentional. Anyway, it worked. His secret identity would have been unknown to me had I been there.
I did enjoy all the previous Batman movies, and I was very glad to see the emphasis was on Batman this time, and not the master criminal (Penguin, Joker, Mr Freeze etc). The previous Batman movies paid too much attention and screen time to the one performing as the bad guy (DeVito, Nicholson etc) This movie stayed with Bruce Wayne and Batman as well it should, and I hope sequels do the same. Got it, guys?
There will be a sequel to this and the Joker is first out of the box as Lt. Gordon (Oldman) shows Batman a playing card of guess who.
All in all, this is a terrific movie and probably more faithful to the original story by Bob Kane.
Let's see, we have Spiderman, The Punisher, The Transporter, The Dare Devil, Cat Woman and now a good Batman. Can another Superman be far behind? Hmmmmm.