Batman Begins

Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005) has been credited, along with its ultra-successful sequel, last year's The Dark Knight, with breathing new life into the played-out and tiresome superhero genre - a genre that has been stretched to the breaking point with film after mediocre film in recent years (two Incredible Hulks, Fantastic 4, Spider-Man, etc.). Personally, I'm not sure that I buy this line of reasoning. To me, despite its pretensions to seriousness, Batman Begins is yet another generic superhero film with the same mixture of overwrought self-importance and unconscious cheesiness that has characterized the genre over the past decade. I'm not the biggest fan of The Dark Knight, or the same year's Iron Man for that matter, but those films are a genuine breath of fresh air compared to this one.

Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) watches his super-rich parents gunned down by a petty criminal in the streets of Gotham, and grows up wanting revenge. His revenge is denied by agents of Gotham crime boss Carmine Falconi (Tom Wilkinson), whose syndicate controls Gotham with bribes, drugs and guns. Wayne goes on the lam as a criminal and ends up in the monestary of the shadowy Raas a'Ghul (Ken Wantanabe) and his mentor Henri Ducard (who else but Liam Neeson?), who run the League of Shadows, a secret society of vigilantes dedicated to wiping out crime and decadence in the world. Bruce finds out that the League is planning an outright destruction of Gotham, and races back to his home city. With the help of his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and loyal corporate associate Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Wayne transforms himself to the vigilante Batman, taking on Falconi and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), who as "the Scarecrow" is working with Raas al'Ghul to destroy Gotham with a hallucinogenic drug that will cause Gothamites to go mad with fear and destroy each other. Also playing a part are Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), Bruce's childhood sweetheart-turned-Assistant D.A. (and later turned-Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), one of the few honest cops left in Gotham, who becomes Batman's primary ally.

Claims of critics and fanboys to the contrary, Batman Begins really isn't THAT much different than most superhero films. Despite Nolan's pretensions of creating a darker and more realistic world for the bat to play in, the movie is just as goofy. Semi-realistic villains like Falconi and Crane are left hanging for yet another all-seeing, all-power evil secret society (because who could get enough of them?), whose plot for world domination (or at least Gotham's destruction) seems like the scheme of a particularly lame Bond villain. Characters are only sketchily introduced, and the film has the typical throat-clearing backstory that is both rushed and poorly done. The script is full of clunkily-written pseudo-profundities (along with some just plain cheesy dialogue) that inevitably ring false, when they aren't outright laughable (Falconi's "Don't burden yourself with the secrets of scary people" line may be the worst non-Garbage Day! dialogue in any film); they smack of self-important posturing that can be found in pretty much any film of this genre. All in all, Batman Begins has little to offer that can't be found in pretty much any other superhero film; it's musings on morality and fear are remarkably simplistic and beaten into the audience so often that even the densest three year old would get it.

Technically, the film is pretty good. Nolan's direction is generally solid; he shows a knack for visual style, and handles the film's action scenes reasonably well (though the film lacks a stand-up-and-cheer set-piece like, say, the convoy ambush in The Dark Knight). The movie looks good, for what its worth; it's mostly the script and story that lets the proceedings down. The score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard is repetitive and bland assembly-line junk, with lots of insistent strings and trilling brass that could be culled from any number of action flicks you could care to name.

The cast is a big disappointment; a lot of talent is assembled and mostly wasted. Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne is bland, stiff and boring (let's not even mention the ludicrous Batman voice); I'm becoming more convinced with each film of his I watch that his great performance in Empire of the Sun was a fluke, as he's scarcely given a worthwhile performance since reaching puberty. Katie Holmes is mostly annoying and makes one pine for Maggie Gyllenhaal. Tom Wilkinson, Ken Wantanabe and Cillian Murphy are given thankless roles as secondary bad guys who are poorly introduced and have little to do. Gary Oldman does what he can, but in this installment Gordon is mostly a humorous role. Michael Caine provides wheezy comic relief, and Morgan Freeman's role is virtually superfluous (say what you will about the Burton-Schumaker Batmans, they at least economized their characters). It's Liam Neeson who gives the best performance; he's played the mentor guy in pretty much every film of the last ten years, from The Phantom Menace to Kingdom of Heaven to The Chronicles of Narnia, but he's good at it by now - though he doesn't quite make the transition to evil that the script requires of him. The Dark Knight would do a much better job with its ensemble cast; Oldman, Aaron Eckhardt, and yes, Heath Ledger would all give fine performances far beyond any of the acting on display here.

On the whole, Batman Begins was rather disappointing and has little to offer that the Spider-Man and Fantastic 4 films didn't already bring to the table. Fortunately, Nolan and Company would get a lot more right the second time around, creating a solid, well-written and -acted superhero film distinctly different from the cookie-cutter superhero formula.

Rating: 5/10 - Mediocre