Batman Begins
Also reviewed by:
WP McCoy
Batman Begins begins badly. Begins badly in regard to both the start of the film, and as a new start to a franchise. It's a pity because despite the feeling deep in my loins that it was way too early for another Batman effort (and an obvious cash-in on the success of other comic-book films of late) I was really, really looking forward to this. The promotional material did its job nicely and I admit I was fully seduced by posters, pictures, the pedigree of the director (Memento's Chris Nolan) and stars (mostly) and a superbly cut trailer (when are they going to give an Academy Award to 'Best Trailer-Makers from a Feature Film'?).
The start of the film is a jumbled mess. This is where this film was supposed to stand out from the other Batman films and show the much anticipated journey of how Bruce Wayne became Batman. Within seconds of the opening shot, a young Bruce falls into a well and is attacked by bats, scarring him forever. Flash-forward to the present where Bruce has got himself thrown in a jail to study the criminal element and then is released and trained as a ninja, all as a direct result of his parents being killed in front of him by a random criminal – the way it should have been and a good decision to revert the character's history back to the original comic tale, however…
Now, I get the aim of this first third of the film, and I fully support what they were trying to do, but the execution is off. Way off. It feels like we slam between a lot of little scenes where characters are only talking in philosophical-speak where every sentence involves an acute observation on the very nature of fear. The ninja scenes feel like I should be spoofing my fanboy dacks, but surprisingly Nolan proves quite inept at filming action and all we get are rapid-edited blurs of body parts jutting in and out, too quick to take inventory of what they are, or what is happening.
The middle of the film is where my interest peaked as Bruce returns to his manor and loyal butler Alfred and after deciding to become a vigilante (after more awkward “fear is like this blah blah blah” speeches) he realizes he has to maintain the vacuous existence that people expect of a rich and damaged playboy bachelor. For a fleeting moment Bale seems to draw on Bateman (no, that's not a spelling error, but his sociopath character in American Psyco) in playing Wayne on display, but it's only this single scene where we see the Bruce Wayne mask, and it is ruined by an appearance of Katie Holme's character Rachel. Bruce frets in front of her and explains that this wild party-boy image isn't the real him underneath. Pity, as I thought they blew the only opportunity to make their relationship as interesting as it would have been if she spent the whole film thinking her old friend Bruce Wayne was a superficial arrogant idiot, an image he had to keep up to protect her, and his duel identity. But nope, everything they built up in that one scene is wasted immediately on trying to establish a real connection between the two selfless, justice-seeking characters, a romantic sub-plot as laughable and pointless as Holmes's character itself.
Wayne 's relationships with Alfred (Michael Caine) and Lucious Fox (Morgan Freeman), a Wayne Enterprises employee that's responsible for most of those “wonderful toys”, are, on the other hand, the most important of the film, and play out for the most part quite nicely. Now, on paper this should have been the part of the film that worried me. After, all, story-wise there's not a hell of a lot going on. In the film however this provided me with a few little moments that I genuinely enjoyed. The nuts and bolts of creating the Batman identity is as enjoyable to watch as the scenes in Spider-Man where Peter Parker tries out all his new powers for the first time.
And this brings us to the first appearance of 'The Bat'. Where Nolan's direction of action scenes earlier on was completely lackluster and confusing, it now makes some kind of sense as we barely get a glimpse of Batman as he dips in and out of the shadows, hunting his prey. In fact one gets the sense that to the unfortunate criminals on that particular night, they are trapped in a horror film, with Batman as their Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, taking them out one by one.
So there we have Batman. We know how he came to be and why he came to be. All in all, a pretty entertaining film, although one with as many bad decisions (by both writer and director) as good – hold on...what's happening here? Is that…could that be…are they actually trying to start a story in the last third of this film? Dear God…they are!
The rest of the film is just a haze that I only caught glimpses of because I was too busy slamming my head repeatedly in disbelief on the chair in front. Something about a bad guy psychiatrist who wears a mask and administers crazy gas to captured thugs to protect the city's mobster boss from informants and then he gets a dose of his own medicine and then releases every insane person from the asylum he is locked up in as his crazy gas takes over all of Gotham and then he is on a horse – and where the hell did he get that horse from? Add to this the re-emergence of a shadowy figure from the start of the film whose motives are possibly the most confusing of any megalomaniac villain I've ever heard (soooo over these bad guys with delusions of world domination. Why oh why can't it just be a little more personal battle between hero and villain?) and you have a terrible, terribly dumb action ending.
The premise was a good one: starting over by starting from the very start. The cast was quite good (with the usual exception of Miss Holmes and her three facial expressions) and Christian Bale made a fine and menacing Batman. The director was one that showed so much promise, but here only flirted with few moments of greatness. So that brings us to the script. It never ceases to surprise me how studios have no problem throwing hundreds of million of dollars at a film when the script is sub-par. Word is that Goyer's script was rushed in between other projects he was working on, but the problems stem more from the story as the film was trying to be all things to all people, and in the end it reached an uneasy compromise between being the dark artful origin story that was expected of Nolan, and being a big dumb action film crammed with too many villains and a pointless love story that you would have got if Joel Schumacher had directed this one as well. If all main parties agree to return for other installments I will be very interested to see which way they will lean to for the sequels, or if they will repeat their mistakes and have more disappointing messes like Batman Begins on the hands.