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Christian Bale is the Caped Crusader in Batman Begins.
I was standing near the front of a very long line outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood waiting to get into the 7:00 p.m. show of Batman Begins and one of the people who had seen the show that was just letting out paused and asked my friend and I if we were in line for the next show. After we nodded that we were he said “You will love it, it’s the best movie I’ve seen in the long time.” Since I had no knowledge of his credentials for rating movies and since he was old enough that the last movie he saw might have been Marty, I didn’t put much credence into his assessment. That was a mistake. He was right on target.
No one at Warner Brothers has taken credit for choosing Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) to take over the helm of this franchise, but whoever it is deserves a raise and a promotion. Batman Begins delivers all of the promise and potential that this comic book hero could have brought to the big screen since the first attempt way back in the 1940 serials.
Created in 1939 by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and first appearing in Detective Comics issue #27, Batman is unlike most other comic book superheroes because there is not anything that is truly “super” about him. He has no superpowers, no ESP, nothing other than the fortune left to him by his parents and the burning hatred of criminals inspired by the well-known story of their death.
Like most of the previous versions of the Batman story, we see those deaths, but we get more in the excellent script from Nolan and David S. Goyer, including a trip into the psyche of the man behind the mask and this character study makes this Batman film so much more than the previous efforts. The story here is better, the characters are better developed and both are a tribute to the writing skills of the aforementioned dynamic duo.
The film opens with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in the most unlikely of places, a hellhole of a prison in an unnamed country (see trivia at end of review to find out where), fighting six other inmates. It is here that he first encounters Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) who promises to help Wayne get out of prison and use his anger and talents to take revenge on the criminal elements of the world. Ducard trains Wayne in the ways of ninjutsu in the headquarters of the League of Shadows, but when Wayne refuses to kill a criminal as part of the final ritual to join the group, Wayne is forced to make his escape and to return to Gotham City to try to rescue it from the criminal element that hold the city firmly in its grip.
He comes home to find out that he’s been declared dead, but that is quickly rectified and he resumes his life as a billionaire playboy, seemingly without a care in the world, while secretly planning his campaign against crime. Aided by Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), a scientist working for the Wayne Foundation and his always faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine), Batman bursts upon the scene, going after Gotham City’s biggest criminal, Carmine Falcone.
I don’t want to spoil this wonderful movie by giving away any more of the story. It is capable of standing on its own merits as is the wonderful direction of Nolan. The acting is also superb, particularly that of Christian Bale. He manages to succeed where George Clooney, Val Kilmer and Michael Keaton before him failed, to tap into the dark side of Batman. There is a thirst for revenge, a desire to even the score that we don’t see in those earlier portrayals that Bale manages to bring to the screen. It is visible when it needs to be and beneath the surface but available when it should be hidden. Liam Neeson makes a fine Ducard and Cillian Murphy is excellent as Dr. Crane, the psychiatrist who keeps freeing the thugs working for Falcone even though there isn’t really anything wrong with them.
There are two minor flaws in Batman Begins. One is that some of the fight sequences are poorly lit and therefore difficult to see. However, they were still much better than other fights in the other Batman movies, so this was a step up. The other minor flaw is that while Katie Holmes is a very good actress and delivers a fine performance, she appears to be too young to be believable as an assistant District Attorney. After all, less than one year ago she was playing a freshman enrolling in college in First Daughter and she looked to be just the right age for the part, even though that movie came out just before her 26th birthday. But these are very minor flaws and they don’t detract from the excellent movie that is Batman Begins.
As promised, a few tidbits of Batman trivia. The name Bruce Wayne comes from the names of Scotland’s famed Robert the Bruce and noted Revolutionary War General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. The issue of Detective Comics that Batman first appeared in is a collector’s item and in near mint condition can be worth over $300,000. Actor Lewis Wilson was the first to portray Batman on the big screen back in 1943 in a serial that spanned 15 episodes and as a sign of the times featured a Japanese villain, Dr. Daka.
What’s the point of this trivia? There’s no point, just a few fun facts about a franchise that has been around for more than half a century. Also, it lets me say that Batman Begins is probably the best ever portrayal of the Caped Crusader, so don’t miss it. The movie’s makers laid clear plans for a sequel, so hopefully we’ll be seeing more of Christian Bale in that cape and mask, same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel.
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