Batman Begins

Cast & Crew:

Director:	Christopher Nolan
Story:	David S. Goyer
Screenplay:	David S. Goyer & Christopher Nolan
Starring:	Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, Linus Roache.

After the murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne (Bale) wanders the world consumed by fear and vengeance. At his lowest ebb he encounters Henri Ducard (Neeson) who teaches him in the ways of the ninja and gives him a direction in his meaningless existence. He returns to Gotham City and with the help of his trusted butler Alfred (Caine), childhood friend / love interest Rachel Dawes (Holmes) and a Police Sergeant named Gordon (Oldman); he seeks to restore order to the streets and bring fear to those who prey on the innocent. This includes the twisted Dr Jonathan Crane a.k.a Scarecrow (Murphy) and mob boss Falcone (Wilkinson), who rules the Gotham underworld with an iron grip. A struggle for the city ensues.

8 years since the woeful Batman & Robin comes Batman Begins, which thankfully, seems light years apart in comparison. Warner Brothers have often been criticized for their handling of the series but they now appear to have learnt from their previous mistakes and injected it with not only a cast & crew that oozes talent but a story that is actually (pause for dramatic effect) quite good. Collaborators Christopher Nolan and David S Goyer have a clear love and respect for the material they are dealing with. The problem I always had with the previous Batman outings was that Batman always was less interesting than the villains of the piece. See Jack Nicholson's joker in Tim Burton's Batman for example. What this film does is return the focus back to Batman, showing what no other film has yet. His origins. The birth of Batman. Nolan has gone for a gritty realistic approach, making Batman Begins the most atmospheric entry in the franchise to date. Gone are the gimmicks, everything in Nolan's movie is grounded in reality and seem plausible. The special effects rely less on CGI to bring this point across. Everything from the new costume to the Batcave is given this treatment. As a result nothing feels too far-fetched, creating a more believable world for the audience. The Batmobile, for instance, is re-imagined as a hi-tech military prototype vehicle that the military could not afford to put into production. Gone are the vehicles more ridiculous gadgets from the previous films, now all we have is a kick-ass ride with some pretty nifty missile launchers. It is this attention to detail that really makes this film work. The action scenes are handled with this same sensibility, be it the roof-top chase sequence or Batman's stealthy removal of Falcone's thugs. The style is up close and personal, and at times during the various fights you can almost feel the blows (think the Bourne Supremacy on steroids and you're almost there). This is all set to a cracking score composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Although this seems like an odd pairing of talent and the fact that the film doesn't seem to contain a theme as iconic as Danny Elfman's work, it is still enjoyable and fits in with Nolan's grimmer view of Gotham.

Next is the acting. Michael Caine is absolutely indispensable as Alfred, demonstrating not only a superb comic timing but also a subtle emotional performance that lifts this film above many other comic book adaptations. Also terrific in their limited screen time are Freeman as Lucius Fox, the man who kits out Wayne with his crime fighting gear, Tom Wilkinson as crime kingpin Carmine Falcone and Rutger Hauer, rolling high on his Sin City success, as the head of Wayne Enterprises. Murphy was suitable creepy as Scarecrow and it was great to see Gary Oldman as the future Police Commissioner Gordon get more material than the character is used to, to sink his teeth into. Katie "Mrs Cruise" Holmes also does good work with the obligatory unrequited love interest role (à la Mary Jane from the Spiderman series). Liam Neeson makes a charismatic Henri Ducard, who is interestingly difficult to label as a hero or a villain. But full marks must go to Bale. He IS Batman. In the earlier scenes you can see the pain and guilt over his parents death written on his face. As the film progresses, so does Wayne's character as he learns to channel his anger and use it to do good. But when he puts on that cape, he is scary. Quite possibly the scariest character in the film. That's how Batman should be. As the film draws to an end we are given an excellent setup for the second instalment (of a planned trilogy) that produced claps from the audience. It will be interesting to see where the filmmakers will head with this new vision. I think I'll go and book my ticket in advance now.