Very good, but missing something?

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2005)

I have to admit that I had really high expectations of this movie, Christian Bale was the perfect candidate to revive the Bat franchise, Christopher Nolan surely had something fresh to bring to the prequel (Joel Schumacher we will never forgive you).
Overall this film looks great, if a tad bit depressing in places. Nolan does a perfect job of the performances, (Michael Caine, on excellent form, though a little underused....I thought). Sadly Nolan fails in the action department, and this lets the whole film down for me. When Batman kicks ass the fight scenes are poorly framed choppily edited and annoying to watch.
A decent second unit director should have definitely been considered, I'm not asking for Yeun Wo Ping to bring in the strings, but having someone who knows how to frame a fight sequence would have helped.
Many of the blockbusters have suffered this year because of poor action choreography. Revenge of the Syth looked great, but again George Lucas can not direct a decent lightsaber duel to save his life. The ultimate face off between Annakin and Obe would have been outstanding if George had of brought someone in who knew what they were doing, poor camera angles, missed opportunities, no sense of danger or struggle, (Samuel J we will forgive you, but you did look like a muppet, and yeeees!!! you did go out like a sucker!!!) To get back to Batman, I'm not slogging this movie off, I will be definitely adding this to my DVD collection, but why spend all that money on a good looking movie when the fight scenes look like they where done by the numbers. If this where my movie, I would be gutted pass off action sequences like that.
8 out of 10, might have got 9.5 had the action delivered!!! Well done to everyone involved none the less Afterthought: what would this have been like had Tarrantino got his hands on it....we can only dream....