Works at its best, when it isn't a batman film.

Rating: 7/10 (22 October 2005)

In my opinion the very fact that this film was a batman film is the element that weakened it. It seem to work so much better when it was character building, in the first 40 minutes. I found as soon as our hero put on the black cape the film didn't work, it lost its attention to detail, sloppily slipping in and out of sentiment. I think Christian Bale is a great performer, his performance in American Psyco and his butt kicking gun carter from the cult hit Equilibrium, have proved his presence. His performance as Bruce Wayne is deep and rooted, but as soon as he plays batman, it becomes a rather cheesy affair. The same can be said for Cillian Murphy, who is suitably sinister as a corrupted Phycologist, but his character nose dives with the cheesy lines of the Scarcrow character. I have to say this now that Katie Holmes is a promising performer yet her performance is rather poor here, not terrible though. Another problem with this film is the music, not denying the prowess of such grand performers as Hans Zimmer(Gladiator) and James Newton Howard (The sixth sense). Unforortunately these two creative forces collide like two power sources canceling each other out. The composers music worked much better when it was separated. Howards sweeping emotional score, with Zimmers synthesized epic quality. Yet personally i would have just gone with Howard, for a strong emotion suspense score. forget Zimmer as he didn't suit this film. Yet not all is lost, this is a great film, and its nice to see major studio's such as Warner issuing such, investment and creative control to a too often ridged and commercial industry. Christopher Noland, director of the masterful 'Momento' brings this film a dark edge. This film isn't perfect, but its miles ahead of most of the crap American studio's are pumping out these days. i can only hope that this is the start of an assent ion from this slump wave been having with originality and quality. 14/11/07: after viewing the film again it's clear this film is a bit of a mildstone. looking forward to the dark knight.