Product: Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition) (2005)
Rating: 4.0
Great stuff.
Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005)Nolan finally shows us that Memento wasn't a fluke with Batman Begins. Completely ignoring the film-series mythos, he starts from scratch again, giving us the story of Bruce Wayne (The Machinist's Christian Bale, giving his second fantastic performance in two years) in the years leading up to his becoming Batman, as well as the first months of his superhero status.While Bale's performance is quite good, there's no way he could have pulled this off by himself. Nolan and co. surrounded him with an excellent supporting cast, including Liam Neeson, Michael Caine (who takes over the Alfred role more than capably), Gary Oldman, Katie Holmes (whose career, save the amusing Pieces of April, had taken a decidedly ugly turn before this), Rutger Hauer, Morgan Freeman, and more (it would, in fact, be possible to spend an entire thousand-word review just naming, much less extolling the virtues of, the cast).Nolan seems to have (thankfully) thrown away everything he learned in his completely unnecessary remake of Insomnia and decided to direct another Memento. Good thing, too; the dark, claustrophobic atmosphere of Memento is tailor-made for a Batman story. He's got a bigger budget this time, though; Nolan's Gotham is perhaps the best-realized alternate city since Ridley Scott made Bladerunner more than two decades ago now. Nolan, like Scott before him, shows that it's possible to have a whole city as your landscape and still make a movie that's almost painfully intimate.About the only real flaw in it is that Bruce Wayne's character isn't nearly as fatally flawed as either his comic-book incarnation (at least, the comic-book incarnation we've had for the past twenty years or so) or as he was in the earlier films. However, if Nolan continues the series, and the movie's final scene certainly sets the stage for that, then he'll certainly have ample opportunity to more fully explore Wayne's character.The best Batman film to date by a wide margin. It's good to see Nolan's found his chops again. ****