"Batman Begins ** 1/2
This was my 2nd time viewing this movie and I enjoyed it more so than I did in the theaters. Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman and Cillian Murphy were all very enjoyable. I liked Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne but not so much as Batman. He just didn't do it for me with the costume and his voice the second time around. This is a pretty good movie but it's not the "best comic book movie ever" as I've heard many people calling it. IMO it's grossly overrated" - Irishman12
The year of 2005 is certainly one that will be remembered for ages by people who once were, or currently, fans of American comic books. Consider there was the supernatural CONSTANTINE which not only "American-ized" a British-created-British "super-hero", but actually turned out to be an enjoyable nice picture. Then the opposite occured for FANTASTIC FOUR, which went through some changes...and turned out to be quite terrible, arguably the worst "Comic Book Film" since BATMAN & ROBIN. However, the two movies that will be celebrated years to come as among the best of the Comic Book-Movie subgenere came in two films highly praised by critics/fans and were pretty financially successful, and ironically involved the creativity of comic book writer/artist Frank Miller, of which I wonder if our colleague Irishman realized of sorts besides the obvious film that Miller "Co-Directed".
Certainly the pulpish/stylish SIN CITY from Director/Producer/Editor/Cinematographer/Production Designer/Caterer Robert Rodriguez and the major summer blockbuster tent-pole picture in Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS both now can lay claim to the throne of the Greatest Movie of their sub-genre.
Actually, both are, but in different reasonings of logic. For one thing, SIN CITY itself tries to copy the source comics in the many short-stories and graphic novels that Frank Miller penned back in the 1990s, so in ambition it tries to be literally a "Comic Book Film" in style and execution, and not just simply an adaptation of a comic as the rest of the films in the sub-genre are.
Yet Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS claims itself to easily the best "Comic Book Film" in terms of taking over 70-sum years of the character's source material and thus try to create its own comprehensive-origin tale in an adaptation in the form of a motion picture. Big difference from SIN CITY.
As much as I enjoyed the hell out of SIN CITY in theaters and again on DVD, it's pulp tales of revenge, action, crime, and violence is the sum of my super-positive opinion of it.....BATMAN BEGINS worked more for me on many more levels, since finally someone in Hollywood created the true origin-story of the true dark "boogeyman" in the streets of a major city, a scary mysterious creature that lurks the back-alleys and roofs of a truely gigantic metropolitan area, where criminals tell stories of "The Bat Man" to each other inorder to frighten the darkest of hearts.
Sure, there was Tim Burton's earlier BATMAN(**1/2-5) and BATMAN RETURNS(***/5) which certainly both have the look of the fictional Gotham City right, yet while I like Burton's dark-fantasy view of the character, and Michael Keaton's distantly-cold off-beat work as Bruce Wayne, the films were never more than pop entertainment, for there is no investment in a character from the audience since Burton and his scriptwriters cheated the source-tale of how the Batman took form, save for the essential-pivotal moment when his parents were killed in front of his eyes. Other than that, we never understand why he took the elementary shape of a Bat, or how a billionaire playboy became such an impressive fighter, or how/where he got his tools and vehicles. In otherwords, its the end-result without the equation or process that creates it.
While SIN CITY doesn't, nor needs, explore in depth why characters became this or that, they simply are, for its their exploits that are the peas and carrots of their tales. However, Director/Co-writer Christopher Nolan and Co-scripter and former BATMAN comic book writer David S. Goyer reportedly sat down in Nolan's garage in the UK and while jotting down the ideas and stuff they wanted to explore in their "relaunch" of the BATMAN franchise seven years after the disasterous BATMAN & ROBIN, they watched many films to gouge the story they want to present into existence. Among the films they watched included the flawed SUPERMAN from director Richard Donner in the 1970s that despite the 3rd-Act being a generic 70's Blockbuster Bond-esque "Doomsday Plan", the build-up from the doomed world of Krypton and the early years in Smallville are what make the mythology and legend of Superman effective, more so than just a guy in tights flying around. Nolan and Goyer reportedly also watched over John Milius' underrated gem CONAN THE BARBARIAN, which in mythological story-telling we will see its DNA stains in the final product of BATMAN BEGINS, and Sir Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER for its pure atmosphere and city-landscape(as I explained in my review of that masterpiece from a few weeks back).
With the 1st Act focusing on Nolan executing a non-linear beginning of Bruce Wayne who as a care-free child part of the luxurious American Noble Class, while then showing him as a grown man (Christian Bale) locked up in quite a shit-hole of a Chinese prison. We learn of his innocence destroyed when his parents were fatally shot by a random street thug, then later his desire for bloody revenge against that man is forever denied...and finally disapearing intentionally from the face of the Earth so he could return to his Gotham City someday to fight the system-controlling criminals of the city. Then his meeting with the mysterious "Ducard"(Liam Neeson) and his League of Shadows that teach him to become a ninja-like super warrior, before turning righteous against that organization.
In other words, by the hour-mark when Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City seven years after he left on his mini-Odyssey, we are heavily invested in the character, and before we even get a shot of Batman in costume, where finally in execution that I remember from my childhood days of reading the BATMAN comics, we see a man in costume that with his ninja-moves quickly take out criminals from the shadows, then quickly return to his trained-"invisibility". Hell, while Micheal Keaton never quite convinced me that in his stiff-rubber suit that he could be, to put it, a "badass fighting machine", Nolan convinces us that indeed Christian Bale is such a thing.
Like Milius' CONAN THE BARBARIAN, we learn how "The Batman" decided to dress up like a bat, how the Batcave was created, how he got his costume and weapons, how he gets the Batmobile, why the "Bat Symbol" came into existance, and even a good plot-question...Exactly how does Bruce Wayne order and ship in the materials he needs for his little War on Crime without anyone noticing it?
Certainly the villains come off quite faithful, and fine in execution, as from the comics in the social/economic warrior/terrorist Ra's Al Ghul, the quite intelligent-yet-nutty Scarecrow(where Cillian Murphy was damn more scary looking without the mask), and even the last "normal" criminal in Carmine Falcone goes with what I remember from the comics. Actually for once in a BATMAN movie, the title character has a true origin tale, and the "star" of the film, and not the villains, which was the problem in both Burton and Joel Schumacher(or "Shitmaker" to my friends back in 1997) films.
I do agree that the film still has the obligatory-blockbuster "Doomsday Plot" for a 3rd Act, the sort-of unorganic "Love Interest" nonsense that studios place in most big-budget pictures inorder to attract more than just the male demographic(then again, how many women actually went to see BATMAN BEGINS strictly because of the Demon Seed-carrying Katie Holmes?), and yes the comic "camp" one-liners that nearly made me wanna punch Sam Raimi over in SPIDER-MAN 2. "Nice Car", "I gotta have one of those!", blah blah blah. Still, at least unlike other films, the one-liners and the "Love Flirting" don't come close to train-wrecking the picture as with the SPIDER-MAN movies.
Instead, Nolan and Goyer take characters, concepts, and actually scenes from the comics, especially the idea of the hero using Bats as a distraction/"Back Up" and a Tank-like Batmobile coming from the superb Batman graphic novels YEAR ONE and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS penned and drawn by.....Frank Miller. Does the Irishman know of that? :p
Still, the cast though....really, just ignore Mrs. Tom Cruise, and look at the hell of a roster of actors that rivals that of SIN CITY: Christian Bale, Sir Michael Caine, Gary Oldman(who actually doesn't play a baddie for once), Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe(who actually in THE LAST SAMURAI had more presence and charisma in just standing and breathing than the midget Tom Cruise ever could in his "acting"), the most obvious BLADE RUNNER homage of them all in Rutger Hauer, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, and of course Liam Neeson. What really surprised with BATMAN BEGINS is that I expected all the nicely-paid great actors like Caine, Freeman, Neeson, etc., to simply chew the scenary in their small moments in the picture...instead they all act their roles good for what they are intended for, and nothing more or less.
Maybe what pleased me the most with this film is that despite Nolan's attachment, despite the superb cast that signed up, and even despite the Ridley Scott-esque stylish shots and scenary I garnered in the theatrical trailer...I didn't give two farts about it. Maybe because of the generic bland-safe superhero blockbusters like SPIDER-MAN, X-MEN(though I did enjoy both of Bryan Singer's movies), DAREDEVIL, and of course the earlier BATMAN pictures, I expected simply what I had seen before. Instead, I got a picture that moved me as both a fan of the comics and of movies in general. Certainly makes me giddy as to what else Christopher Nolan has for the rest of us in the future as a filmmaker, along with assuredly his return sometime to Gotham City and the Batcave...
Final Film Rating - ****1/2 out of 5
lol
