I’m back!! Spent two weeks out of state for work (one week in Kentucky, one week in Idaho), and the last two weeks recovering and catching up on things, but now I’m back and ready to work on the blog! So let’s get back to the movie reviews. We’ve reached the middle of June, and our first superhero movie of the summer – Batman Begins. And I have to say, it was well worth the wait. This movie is easily good enough to make one forget about the horrid excuses for Batman movies that were Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. While it’s a tough call for me to say whether it was better than the original Batman movie (but that’s because I’m a big Tim Burton fan, and both Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson gave phenomenal performances in the original), I will say that it was easily as good as the original, and it is a rock solid starting point for reinventing the franchise. The performances were all solid. Christian Bale does a great job as a younger Bruce Wayne, Morgan Freeman is wonderful as Lucius Fox (a Batman character long overdue to be brought into the movies), and Michael Caine is superb as Alfred (although I honestly don’t think any actor, even one as incredibly talented as Mr. Caine, will ever really be able to replace Michael Gough, who so perfectly embodied the character in the previous four films). And let’s not forget Katie Holmes, who is as cute and adorable as ever. Mmmmmm, Katie! ;-)
This movie continues the tradition from the previous films (except the original) of featuring two major Batman villains, in this case Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul, both great Batman villains who haven’t appeared previously in a Batman movie. And I have to say, they got two great actors to play the parts! Of course, historically the Batman movies have done a pretty respectable job of finding the right actor/actress to play the villain; the problem has generally been the parts have been horribly written (it still pisses me off that they found the perfect actor to play The Penguin in Danny DeVito, but then they wrote the character so unbelievably wrong that it completely ruined it. DeVito’s performance was great, but the character that had been written for him was so pathetic and poorly done that he couldn’t really do anything with the character).
Spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen the movie yet (and as late as this review is, if that’s the case, shame on you!). The following paragraph gives away one of the secrets of the movie, so if you haven’t seen it yet, skip this paragraph and go on to the next one. You have been warned! So Batman Begins manages to get not one, but two great actors into the role of Ra’s Al Ghul. Liam Neeson plays the real Ra’s Al Ghul (after pretending to be his right-hand man and going by the name of Henri Ducard, which is also how he’s listed in the credits, interestingly enough – probably less confusing that way, I suppose), and for anyone who’s read the comics, he so fits the role, both appearance-wise and performance-wise. He just does a wonderful job all the way around. But let’s face it, he is Liam Neeson, after all; how could you expect anything less? The second actor portraying the villain (the man who is first introduced to Bruce Wayne as Ra’s Al Ghul, who later turns out to be a fake to protect the villain’s real identity) is the wonderfully talented Ken Watanabe, pretty much unrecognizable from his previous role in The Last Samurai. He doesn’t really have much of a part here, but he’s got this great Fu Manchu vibe to him that’s just fun to watch.
The other villain in the film is Dr. Jonathan Crane, better known as The Scarecrow. He is played by Cillian Murphy, a not-so-well-known Irish actor (at least, I’d never heard of him before, although in looking him up I was surprised to discover that he’d previously appeared in Cold Mountain) who does a brilliant job (he’s also great in Wes Craven’s Red Eye, a movie I highly recommend seeing – although who knows when I’ll actually get caught up to the point to do a full review of it). His take on the character (and I’m sure part of that was the way the role was written) was a little different from how I envisioned Scarecrow in the comics (for one thing he’s about a decade younger, but that actually fits considering they’re starting Batman young and new as well), but it was still brilliantly done. I’m thinking this guy is definitely going to be an actor to keep an eye on in the future.
There are two other characters I’d like to mention before I close out this review, just because I’m a big fan of the two actors who play them. The first is Rutger Hauer’s character, who’s listed in the credits simply as Earle. While not exactly a major character in the movie (and not a character from the comics at all that I’m aware of), he does a very good job of playing the amoral, scumbag corporate executive that we all love to hate. And I just have to say that I am so happy to see him showing up in big
And finally, a review of this film wouldn't be complete without at least a brief thank you to its director, Christopher Nolan. While he's only directed a handful of films, what he's done so far has been pretty impressive, and I must say he continues that trend with this movie. He does as good a job as a movie can of being true to the spirit of the character and the comics. He is just an all around solid director, and I hope they keep him on for future films.
So in summary, Batman Begins is what the original Batman movies should have been and sadly weren’t – very well written, very tightly directed, and starring an incredible cast that truly inhabit their characters and really bring them to life. If you’re a fan of Batman at all (or even just a fan of well-done comic book movies), you’ll really enjoy this film. If I have any complaint about the film, it’s that it doesn’t really capture the deep-seated, intense obsession that Batman’s war on crime is to him. Anyone who’s read the comics for any length of time knows that deep down, Bruce Wayne is a seriously screwed-up individual in dire need of an incredible amount of therapy. He’s cold and distant from even those close to him to an almost frightening degree, and he’s focused to the point of scary obsessiveness. The problem is, this just isn’t something you can capture in a two hour movie without making the character completely unsympathetic to the audience, which is something you just can’t do if you want the audience to connect with your hero. So while I’ve always found it to be a shame that the movies can never truly capture Batman’s personality, I also understand that it’s a limit of the medium that you’re just not going to get around, so it’s not something I hold against the movie at all.
And with that I will call this entry complete!! Now to proofread it and get it posted so that it can be enjoyed by my fans all across the ‘Net! (okay, so it can be read by those handful of friends of mine that peruse my blog on occasion) :-)
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