Product: Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition) (2005)
Rating: 5.0
The Citizen Kane of Movies
This is easily the best super hero film ever made, and possibly one of the Top 10 movies of all time. If the Joel Schumacher installments accomplished anything, it's that they paved the way for WB to blow up the franchise and start over. I was a HUGE fan of the first Batman when it came out (I was 13) and this movie makes it look like a joke.The most refreshing aspects of the movie is its realism. Portraying Gotham as modern day America, rather than some gloomy comic nightmare, or a neon-riddled discotheque draws us drawn into the action like we haven't been before. Complimenting this direction perfectly were the understated performances of the actors. It was nice to see villains that could exist in real life. I was worried going into this that there were too many story lines -- aside from how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, there is the love interest with Katie Holmes, and all the villains: Scarecrow, Raj Al Ghul, Carmine Falcione, the Chairman of Wayne Industries... would these all bog down the story the way they had in the past? Are these villains for villains' sake? I glad to say they work perfectly together, and it's not overwhelming in the slightest. I was also relieved they put the romance on the back burner, and Katie Holmes primary role in this movie is to be on the posters and in the trailers, where she looks fantastic.Christian Bale was superbly cast as the billionaire playboy with a dark secret to hide, complete with two references to infamous lines in American Psycho -- 'inside doesn't matter', 'my mask of sanity is about to slip'. Cillian Murphy gives Nicholson a run for best villian ever - I'm not exaggerating, he's incredible, even in the few minutes of screen time. Morgan Freeman is fantastic as a scientist who has been run through the corporate grinder and ended in the basement of Wayne Industries. Liam Neison plays the most interesting character in the movie, and probably put this movie over the top for me, and cemented it as one I will never forget.In a brilliant subtext of the movie they use Wayne Manor and as euphemism for the Batman franchise. This was very entertaining, and rare to see in an action/adventure movie.For what a movie is supposed to accomplish, Batman Begins may hit the mark sharper than any movie ever made. It is one of the most engrossing, entertaining, creative, and smartly written movies of it's genre - but more importantly, the expectations have been driven so low over the past 15 years, they had a monumental task is restoring credibility to a character that for all intents and purposed has been delegated to Ace & Gary references on SNL.It was just nice to leave the theater after watching a Batman movie without having to convince myself that I liked it. It's also nice to see that the 13 year old kid that collected all the Batman baseball cards, and talked to his best friend for months leading up to June 23, 1989... trying to figure out the exact plot of the movie with information taken from Rolling Stone, behind the scenes interviews with the cast, and excerpts from Batdance... that kid was on to something.I was just a couple decades premature, is 'all.