Batman Begins is almost great.

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2005)

Batman Begins is the long anticipated revival of a seriously crippled Batman movie franchise. And it works. Mostly. Mostly. (Bad Aliens reference.) I have to admit that I was a big fan of the 1989 release. I remember watching it in 70mm at the Northpark Mall in Dallas, Texas. It was a movie event, one of the first where I remember having a "magical" experience like those people you see walking into the theater on a red carpet with a Mr. Ticket Buddy at their side. The Prince soundtrack to the movie blared on the speakers inside the theater and I literally watched people dancing in the aisles before the movie started, completely oblivious and uncaring of the packed crowd. It was a carnival atmosphere, and the movie reflected it. This new Batman has all the drama and excitement you can handle, without the fluff. With David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan on the project, you know you're getting a good story and even better visuals. Comic book fans have been waiting for a movie that handles the subject matter as seriously and carefully as those who inspired their desire to see a man become more than the sum of his parts. Nolan uses all of his previous tricks (Did anyone notice his fascination with ice floes and fog?  See Insomnia) to bring this masterpiece* alive. I use the asterisk because I could easily call this movie the best movie I've seen all year except for a few "plot" problems. During an interview with David S. Goyer he was quoted as saying, "(On Batman Begins)'Chris was a real taskmaster about justifying everything in the real world, He kept saying, 'It's gotta be grounded. It's gotta be real'.'" Grounded? Real? The central piece of the plot to destroy Gotham revolves around an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) machine that is utilized to destroy the water system and release a deadly drug that will turn the people of Gotham into fearful lunatics. The subway system is used to transport the EMP machine around Gotham to do its dirty work. Convoluted already? It gets better. If an EMP pulse removes all of the water in its proximity and our body is 70% water, then why didn't Batman (Christian Bale) and his Mentor, Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson), and his mentor's buddies shrivel up like prunes? Or the people of Gotham? Wouldn't that be cool to see? Joker did it the "old fashioned" way by putting his deadly agent in parade balloons. Too loony? Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way was their insistence on tying every villain to Batman personally. It wasn't enough that Ra's Al Ghul was seeking revenge as well as the destruction of the immoral Gotham city, he had to really stick it to Batman by telling him that he attempted to kill the city before with economics and that his father stopped it all by building the transportation system that would eventually signal Gotham's doom. I tried to kill a city with Economics?!!? On the way out of the theater, I beamingly stated to the gentleman in front of me that I tried that once too. My girlfriend nudged me from behind and told me to be quiet. One of the best moments of the movie is a digital effects shot of Batman from the POV of Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). This in itself is slightly disturbing, not because of the shot, but because Nolan himself has been quoted as wanting to avoid using effects to be spectacular. Nolan's pacing is unbelievable, the dialogue is on par, the acting superb, and the defining moments of a great Batman series all exist within this film. It's just too bad that to get all of that out of it, we had to watch Batman thwart a terribly-written plot.