Batman Begins: Go see it. It’s the best Batman since Tim Burton’s, and quite possibly better. It dispenses with the hokiest of comic book conventions without losing track of the story. This is not hard to accomplish with Batman, easily the un-hokiest of superheroes in his original form, but Christopher Nolan accomplishes more than that, using Batman as a canvas to paint a picture of the birth of a hero, and delving with a fair amount of deftness into the well-trodden depths of the bat-psyche. I would not necessarily draw any deep life lessons from the movie’s philosophical underpinnings, but they are at least interesting and self-consistent, which is more than I can say for that other summer movie with a pretension at a theme. *cough* Episode III *cough*.
Nolan continues to pull sometimes surprisingly good performances from his actors, for such a young director, although it’s hard to get a bad performance out of Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, or Gary Oldman. Christian Bale has generally shown himself a capable actor, but be becomes the Batman in this film, and will hopefully erase the memory of the some of the more recent performances in that role. Katie Holmes seems a little out of her depth here, and I wasn’t the only person to notice it, but her performance isn’t bad–it just pales a bit in comparison with the others.
The story is, if not plausible, then at least taut and well-told, with fairly even pacing and a well-executed twist or two. The visuals are hallucinogenically bad-ASS, with a great, dark visual mood and sepia sensibility. My only real disappointment is the fight scenes, which are a blurry, close-cropped mess. Atmospheric, yes, but they don’t tell any kinetic story at all, and often get in the way of the rest of the story, as you’re never sure exactly what’s going on.
All in all though, this movie gets three thumbs up, or would if I had an extra thumb.
