Product: Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition) (2005)
Rating: 4.0
new take on classic hero
There's a long sequence near the beginning of BATMAN BEGINS where Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) finds himself in Bhutan being groomed to join the League of Shadows, an organization headed by the mysterious Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Wantanabe) and dedicated to ....doing something with power and fear. This part of the story contains the requisite mumbo-jumbo about anger, power, control, etc. that's pro forma in this type of film, most of it smoothly delivered by Liam Neeson as Ra's sidekick.A central theme that emerges amid all the talk is the lengths to which Bruce is willing to go to avenge his parents, who we see murdered in an early flashback. The Gotham part of the film, done in a neo-realist style, involves Bruce's first stabs at being Batman, corporate intrigue at Wayne Enterprises, possible love with a childhood sweetheart turned DA (Katie Holmes) and an insufficiently imagined villain called the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) who plans to destroy Gotham with the use of panic inducing drugs.This is a genuinely new take on the superhero flick, which never loses sight of the fact that Bruce is just a man, with no superpowers....the first rate cast includes Michael Caine (Oscar-worthy as Alfred), Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson, Linus Roache, Rutger Hauer, and Morgan Freeman as Bruce's gadget guy.....the best film of the summer...