Spectacularly Bad

Rating: 2/10 (28 May 2007)

I know I'm in the minority, but I found this to be a spectacularly bad film on almost every level. Michael Caine and Liam Neeson, fine actors who often seem to take roles to pay off their credit card debts, turn in the worst performances of their respective careers. Christian Bale turns in a stunning, or rather stunned performance (he seemed to be under the influence of some kind of heavy sedative). Only Morgan Freeman and Katie Holmes gave performances worth mentioning. The first because although he's in another of those "wise prophet in bad movie roles" that he seems to specialize in these days, his performance is warm and energetic. His Fox is actually likable -- in a three-dimensional way. Holmes turns in her best performance since Dawson's Creek. It's not saying much, but it's something.
The plot and the characters is beyond unbelievable and, in some ways, downright offensive. Bruce Wayne's father, a billionaire industrialist who also happens to be a physician, who builds a monorail -- a MONORAIL! -- to pull the city out of a depression (but not the national economy? Does the monorail go all the way to Metropolis, too?), and centralizes all transportation and the municipal water supply in his own corporate headquarters is a good guy? Huh? Sounds like a megalomaniacal John D. Rockefeller-meets-Boss-Tweed type, actually.
This isn't a minor point, since the father is central to Bruce Wayne's motivation (and his hackneyed Oedipal -- we saw it in Star Wars -- relationship with Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul). What the film is saying is that, without the intervention of corporate capital (Wayne Enterprises), the body politics will collapse in on itself; that the corporation -- Halliburton, maybe? -- will save the nation where civil society has failed. Make no mistake, Bruce Wayne is NOT a lone vigilante; he is the enforcement arm of the trillion dollar corporation he runs and which arms him. Given the state of things today, I find that disturbing.
The plot is so full of inconsistencies, that I wouldn't know where to start. The one that leaped out at me and had me shaking my head the most, though, was the idea that the best way to stop the microwave weapon from blowing up the central water system was to send it sailing into the central water system. I'm no physicist, but wouldn't the pressure built up from the vaporized water leading INTO the central system cause it to blow? Wouldn't it be possible to blow the whole thing up just by getting close? There's not much to be said for this film. The long shots of Gotham City looked like the backdrops of a mid-90s video game. The on-site sets looked like they were trying to do Tim Burton without actually having the faintest idea how. I know Gotham is a declining megalopolis, but why does the WHOLE city look like a slum -- except for Wayne Manor, which seems to be in the foothills of the Scottish Highlands with nary a road nor a telephone pole, nor a building to be seen up to the horizon.
I understand that superhero films require a suspension of disbelief. That, in fact, is part of their appeal. This one asks the viewer to suspend far too much. At the same time, it asks you to swallow an ideological message that only George W. Bush could love. That's just way too much.