Promising new Batman film ruined by a fatal flaw

Rating: 3/10 (29 June 2005)

Batman Begins is the latest film entry in the Warner Brothers Batman franchise that I've been looking forward to, even while my interest was marginally low as a Batman comic fan (I contemplated skipping the movie). I own Batman Black & White, Batman: A Death in the Family, et al and I enjoy reading the comics immensely for well-constructed stories. I thought Christopher Nolan's new vision of the rise of Bruce Wayne as a cleverly intelligent billionaire playboy and a valiant crime fighter would herald the beginning of a promising new Batman movie franchise after the abominable failure of Batman & Robin.
After the screening, I had difficulty evaluating the quality of the film - flat-out mediocre, weakly fair or shockingly bad. I attribute my disappointing impression to the one fatal flaw that ruined the film for me, as far as the movie-going experience is concerned: editing.
Batman Begins is the distant cousin to Armageddon. Editing is what totally ruined the movie experience for me when it kept visually pummeling the viewer who was trying to follow the story amidst bizarrely chaotic action, marginal character development and fairly impressive direction by Nolan.
Don't get me wrong, Batman Begins is close to being a good quality movie on the surface level. It's good to be different that spurn the conventional norms to make a truly unique film. But the crime at the scene pointing to the fatal outcome is maddeningly pretentious MTV-lite editing style that killed my interest in what happens in the movie. Some of the action scenes are so chaotic it's confounding and difficult to follow coherently from scene to scene. I thought Edward Scissorhands was brought in to become O.D. on the combined in-take of cocaine, speed and caffeine in editing the film to shreds to render it barely watchable for those who rise above the general audience's attention span of a goldfish.
Batman Begins starts differently pertaining to the development of the main protagonist Bruce Wayne. At this stage, I thought the movie is going in the right direction that stands to purge the bad memory of enduring Batman & Robin at a sold-out movie screening the opening night in June 1997. But as the film progress, the film editing takes precedence in how the visual style should look. It may represent the fast-paced action of the latest comic book series, but for me it gave me a migraine headache. And the film got too predictable. There are the plot points in which I correctly guessed to be divulged, although I liked the creatively constructed plot twists towards the ending. It's fair enough to develop the story to take in the wholly fresh new direction, but I didn't find it compelling because it's very clichéd.
Christian Bale shines throughout the film in spite of the excessively self-indulgent editing. He's a damned good actor and he shows that he can carry the movie without bearing a burden on his shoulders. The supporting actors in the film are basically cardboard cutouts as fairly underdeveloped characters suffering the savage hands of the auteur hack editor Lee Smith with the approved oversight by Mr. Nolan. No emotional impact and attachment whatsoever. Katie Holmes is close to terrible as District Attorney Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins - courtesy of Dawson's Creek acting school. No chemistry whatsoever, either - so bland it makes William Shatner's interactive chemistry with Kirstie Alley in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan seem convincing. Furrowing your eyebrows and pretending to be too serious do not equal good acting. Katie Holmes's miscasting is one of the worst flaws that undermine the film besides rotten caffeine-induced editing. And the ending is so blatant in its opening a slot for a sequel that it felt tacky instead of subliminal.
Batman Begins is a forgettable film typical of the summer blockbuster movie mentality. The only memorable sequence is Morgan Freeman & Christian Bale test-driving a pre-modified custom-built Thundertank...er, Batmobile and it was amusing to watch as it pokes fun of itself with a self-acknowledged wink of humor.
Christopher Nolan did a fine job speculating on the legacy of Batman's beginning, but the editing basically destroyed the film so it registers a negative response from a jaded moviegoer like me. Christopher Nolan and his team of editors should watch Ingmar Bergman's Fanny & Alexander and The Seventh Seal for noble film art in slow-burn psychological character development intensity with slow-moving but precise editing and learn what can be artful while developing an otherwise overwhelmingly commercial film.
Batman Begins is worth seeing in a dollar theater. Otherwise, it's a waste of hard-earned money for a brief, limp escapade of following Bruce Wayne's adventure and vendetta with lesser psychological and visceral impact than expected.
** out of four