Batman Begins

[mr_bad_example]

Until now, I had always thought Batman: Mask of the Phantasm was the grand champion of Batman films. I loved Tim Burton's 1989 film, and I'm one of the few people who liked Batman Returns even more (it was just as good as the first time I saw it...when it was called Edward Scissorhands). Some people think Joel Schumacher made a couple of Batman films too, but THAT NEVER HAPPENED. As I've gotten older, I've even acquired a Frank-Gorshin-based fondness for the 1966 film. But ever since I saw it, Phantasm had been the gold standard. As of today, Phantasm has to share the title.

Christian Bale does a damn fine job. He gets Batman the way Michael Keaton got Batman: both actors understand that Batman is the real character, and Bruce Wayne is just a facade. But where Keaton played Bruce Wayne as disoriented and off-kilter, Bale plays it a little closer to the vest. There's always a little bit of calculation before Bruce Wayne engages in his peccadilloes.

Batman Begins continues the trend started by Spider-Man 2 of taking semi-lame villains and actually making them menacing. The Scarecrow is a definite second-stringer in the comics, but Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy do with him what Sam Raimi and Alfred Molina did with Doctor Octopus: make him flat-out scary. As The Scarecrow's alter ego Dr. Johnathan Crane, Murphy goes from smarmy to unhinged in precisely zero seconds flat.

The supporting cast is amazing as well. Liam Neeson is flat-out awesome as basically a menacing Qui-Gon Jinn. Gary Oldman looks for all the world like he just stepped out of the pages of Batman: Year One. Katie Holmes impressed me as an assistant DA. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine really do provide the moral center for the film, and each has a couple of nice quiet moments in between the fistfights and the fear-gassings.

There are really only two things that could have been improved. Like almost everybody I've spoken to, I think the action scenes were badly edited. They have too many close-ups and quick, choppy edits. There's one exception: the Batmobile chase scene ranks right up there with Bullitt, The Blues Brothers, and The French Connection in terms of great car chases. It makes you forget the 1989 film's Batmobile driving around the same three blocks on the soundstage.

My other problem was with Rutger Hauer's character. He's the CEO of Wayne Enterprises in Bruce's absence. I don't think he was quite evil enough. Sure, he does a couple of rotten things, but the filmmakers really missed an opportunity to play up the whole "crooked CEO" angle. In Sin City, Rutger Hauer showed he can play the most evil bastard in the room. I would have liked to have seen a little more of that here. Just as the Scarecrow and mob boss Carmine Falcone represented Gotham City's overt villainy, Hauer's character should have gone a little farther in representing the corruption and the institutional rot.

Those are both minor nitpicks. I'm sure that as he makes more films, Christopher Nolan will become more facile with the action sequences. And the Rutger Hauer thing it a minor nitpick. All in all, this is hands-down the most awesome Batman film ever made that doesn't have Abe Vigoda in it.

Comments

[gismonda.livejournal.com]

I think that you wrote this whole thing just so you could namedrop Mr. Vigoda.

[mr-bad-example.livejournal.com]

COME TO YOUR POINT, MADAM!