Batman finally done the right way

Rating: 8/10 (24 July 2005)

As much as I enjoyed Tim Burton's first two film's I think this new effort will leave audiences rethinking just how good they actually are and will look at Batman Begins as arguably the best of all of them in the genre. The film begins with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) who's somewhere in the mountains of Asia in a prison camp until he meets Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) who takes him under his wing and introduces him to the League of Shadows.
*****SPOILER ALERT***** The League of Shadows is run by Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and they teach Bruce sword play and other things pertaining to overcoming one's fears but things go too far when he's asked to kill another person. Bruce is forced into a fight and Ra's is killed but he saves Ducard and then heads back to Gotham City where Alfred (Michael Caine) helps him to continue the family name with Wayne Enterprises. Gotham City has become a hotbed for crime and a syndicate run by Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) has taken over things which prompts Bruce to try and clean things up but it's not until he meets Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) that he gets an idea of how to go about it.
Lucius has many things that he's invented over the years (but never used) and it's these items where Bruce constructs the batsuit, finds a prototype of the batmobile, and finds other uses for a cape that he wears. Also adding to Gotham's troubles is Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) who's alias is The Scarecrow and his forte is to spray others with a hallucinogenic that causes insanity and he works for an unknown crime boss who wants to destroy Gotham's water supply. With all that Bruce comes face to face with Ducard once again and it's he who's behind everything and wants to destroy Gotham City and even with the help from an honest cop named Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and his childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) Bruce may not be able to defeat him.
Filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) not only has crafted probably the best Batman film yet but he's re-energized a franchise that was considered dead due to the overly commercial treatment of the material. Nolan has gone to great lengths with the script and story to insure that audiences understand not only how Batman was created by Bruce Wayne but the ramifications of why. This is easily the darkest of the films and Nolan was inspired by "Blade Runner" in terms of how he wanted this to look from the scenes of poverty to the cascading rain that frequents some of the shots. The script allows viewers to see that Wayne not only became Batman to combat crime but to also combat his own personal demons which were the result of a childhood accident and that his parents were not killed by The Joker (that Burton's film showed) but the result of a mugger. The script also shows how Batman's relationship started with future Commissioner Gordon and that Gotham City was infested with crime and mass poverty which was the real reason for the fate of his parents. I also liked the way Nolan didn't try and throw everything into the story and concentrated on just how the caped crusader originated and that the batmobile we see here isn't the real batmobile, instead the vehicle used in this film is just something that he's come across and for now it serves his purpose. My only gripes towards this film come from two things and the first has to do with why Ducard has chosen Gotham for his evil plan which in my estimation was never really made clear (unless something very simple went over my head) and the second thing has to do with the casting of Holmes. The jury's still out on just how good of an actress Holmes is but here she's bland and totally unconvincing as an assistant district attorney and her so-called romance with Wayne seems ridiculously forced. These are minor annoyances and they shouldn't stop anyone from viewing this latest chapter in the Batman films because director Nolan has gotten it right with his sharp and introspective approach and he's restarted this entertaining franchise.