The Best Batman Movie

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2007)

Including the original, in which the Joker dominated the film, and Batman was relegated to a supporting role.
Batman Begins does what none of the other movies did; it gives us a living, breathing Bruce Wayne, the man who becomes Batman. It understands that the audience has to care about the person first before he does something bizarre like put on a silly costume, and still expect us to care about him.
In this film, Batman makes mistakes, almost gets himself fried through stupidity, and uses his brain to survive more than his gimmicks.
This is far from a perfect movie (I didn't find the Scarecrow villain particularly scary or intimidating; basically, if you wear a gas mask, he's harmless, and should have been no real threat to Batman). However, compared to the Batman travesties, particularly Batman Returns (Penguin riding a giant motorized rubber ducky), and Batman and Robin (every moment was incoherent and insulting), this deserves high marks, for simply making us even look at the character again half seriously.
The directing, the acting, and most importantly, the writing are all there. If you have written off the franchise because of the earlier films, check this one out, and watch it on the biggest plasma t.v. you can find. Visually, it is excellent, not a live-action cartoon. My only quibble is that it wraps up Bruce Wayne's war against his former allies, The League of Shadows, much too neatly and easily, particularly considering how unstoppable they have been before (and having them do rather stupid things with explosives that leads to their downfall). Other than that, it is an excellent picture that you can take seriously. That is, as seriously as you can take a character named "Batman".