Product: Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition) (2005)
Rating: 4.0
Has flaws, but is good enough to revive the franchise!
The major flaws with "Batman Begins" are in the first act. A "lost soul" gets mentored in the ways of this-and-that in some faraway and inhospitable locale. Lost soul must learn to "conquer his fears" or something like that. Pretty cliche stuff, and we've all seen it a hundred times.The biggest problem with this act, however, is more technical than artistic. I am convinced that this act was chopped down in length (the final film runs 140 minutes, which is pretty much the longest running time the studios are comfortable with because they are trying to maximize the number of showings per screen per day). The pacing of the scenes in the first act is clumsy. It is either poor editing, poor direction, or both (but it is probably the editing). Just as a movie needs a beginning, middle, and an end, so does each scene in its own way need a beginning, middle, and end, and each scene needs to "flow" properly or it looks clunky. There are many problems in this area in Act One. Plus, some of the warrior training stuff is just a little silly-looking.Things improve a bit as we move stateside in Act Two. The pacing and flow improve. I guess when cuts had to be made in the movie's running time, the first act received the most blows in the editing room.There are two main villains in the film. The Scarecrow is the more interesting of the two, though I feel the part would have been served better by an older actor. But some of the movie's best original bits center around the effects that The Scarecrow and his weapons have on his victims. Pretty cool stuff, actually.Tom Wilkinson plays a crime syndicate boss, but I think he plays it all wrong. No real menace in his performance.There are a disappointingly high number of genre movie cliches in this film, such as the convenient way that principal characters manage to find each other so easily in a city the size of Gotham during scenes of great citywide chaos. There are other cliches that I won't get into now, but if you have seen plenty of movies you will easily recognize them.The Batmobile is pretty cool.The "evil plot" of the main heavies strangely mirrors the Joker's plot in the 1989 "Batman" film.THANKFULLY, outdoor city scenes were mostly shot in an actual city (Chicago) rather than on a soundstage, like in "Batman", "Batman Returns", etc.Like in "Batman Forever", many of the fight scenes are shot so close up that you can't get a feel for the space or a sense of the action. Why do filmmakers ALWAYS do that?Does Christian Bale do a good job? Of course. He is a very fine actor and does a splendid job here. I never worried about that for one minute since learning he was cast in the role.The music is good without being intrusive. There is no specific theme melody, like Danny Elfman and Eliot Goldenthal did so memorably in 1989, 1992, and 1995. You won't leave the theatre humming the Batman theme. But that's okay. It keeps your attention on the film instead of on the "whole entertainment package".We learn in the film's final moments who the next film's villain will be.************ Final Analysis: poor editing and overused cliches nearly ruin the first act. The second and third act are far superior technically and artistically, though they still make us suffer through the occasional genre movie cliche. Bale looks great. This script allows his Wayne/Batman to express much more anger than previous films did. The Scarecrow is an interesting villain that should not have been played by an actor who looks barely 23 years old. But the actor is cute, and this IS Hollywood after all, so.....This film had all the ingredients to be an out-of-the-park Home Run. Instead, it is a very solid Triple. But compared to the last "Batman" film entry in 1997, it is a Grand Slam. It is darker (though still not dark enough, if you ask me) and shows that there is still some promise left in the premise.Final note: The scene where Bruce Wayne's parents get killed by a mugger --- Bruce and his parents slipped out of an opera performance early because something in the opera gave young Bruce the heebie-jeebies. So why did they exit via a side door into an dark and grimy alley instead of walking out through the front door like 99.99999999999% of the rest of the population with a functioning cerebellum would? Even just one well-placed line of dialogue could have covered that, but the filmmakers didn't even try. Instead, we are left to believe that the elder Mr. Wayne is, despite his character's actions prior to that moment, a blissfully ignorant idiot.