My wife wanted to catch up on Batman Begins after reading my blog on Eagerly Awaiting The Dark Knight! and so we ended up watching Batman Begins, me for the 5th time or so and my wife for the very first time. I fell in love with Batman Begins the very first time I saw it when it came out in 2005 and even got the DVD when it came out just so that I could watch it at home whenever I was in the mood for a good superhero movie. My wife too fell in love with Batman Begins and cannot wait for The Dark Knight to arrive. This movie is probably as close as it will get to a perfect superhero movie and I can personally only think of the X-Men series which offered any degree of entertainment. The hugely anticipated Superman Returns sucked big time. I am however eagerly awaiting Star Trek by J. J. Abrams whose work I enjoy very much.
At this time I thought I would post my previous review of Batman Begins so that new visitors to this blog would catch up on it and also this way many new people would be introduced to a fabulous superhero movie like Batman Begins. Over to my review of Batman Begins!
Review: This one is for the personal DVD collection! I liked the first one by Tim Burton with Michael Keaton and also liked the second one. Truth be told I even liked the one with Val Kilmer. Things turned band when George Clooney took over and that was a sentiment echoed the world over with disastrous results for the Batman franchise and further sequels were put on hold.
After a lot of introspection I would assume by the Studio Bosses at Warner Bros. Batman returned with Batman Begins and I should say Batman truly does begin in a new and great direction for the franchise. I should say at the outset that Batman is one of my favorite superheroes simply because he is a superhero without any superpowers unlike Superman or Spiderman and many such others.
Christopher Nolan would not have come to my mind to resurrect the Batman franchise, but his abilities should come as no surprise to anyone after his outing with Memento. The cast is first rate consisting of Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Katie Holmes, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer, Ken Wanatabe and Tom Wilkinson though Mrs. Tom Cruise being rated first rate should be debatable from many quarters, but hey I am not reviewing Katie Holmes here, I am reviewing Batman Begins, though Katie is one of the very few weak links in the movie.
Batman Begins’ story is about how and why Batman became Batman. It shows Bruce’s childhood and how his parents are mugged and murdered before his very eyes. Years later the killer is let out of prison after serving time for good behavior and his remorse over the killings. This does not go well with Bruce and events lead to where Bruce is tired of Gotham City and leaves it all behind and goes on a journey which leads him to join up with a gang called The League of Shadows who take it upon themselves to destroy all evil and evildoers and ensure that justice prevails. In The League of Shadows Liam Neeson becomes Bruce’s mentor and teacher who teaches him martial arts, how to overcome his fears and how to use fear to cloud the judgment of his enemies and how to defeat them. After a while Bruce does not believe or agree with the methods employed by The League of Shadows especially when he learns that they want to destroy Gotham City because it has become the hotbed of crime and corruption. Bruce is asked to lead a team to Gotham City to destroy the city, but Bruce does not agree with the killing of innocent citizens and leaves The League of Shadows back to Gotham after a fight in which he believes he has killed Liam Neeson and Ken Wanatabe the leaders of The League of Shadows.
Bruce returns to Gotham City after a long time, so long in fact that he is declared legally dead in Gotham City. Bruce informs his long time helper and aide, the caretaker Alfred played by Michael Caine where he has been and what he has been up to and his plans to punish the evildoers in Gotham City and bring justice and righteousness back to the city. To this end he enlists Morgan Freeman to build Batman all his amazing gadgets including the Batsuit, Batmobile, etc. We are also shown how Bruce builds the Batcave. After this Bruce finds that Liam Neeson is not dead, but has come to Gotham City to fulfill The League of Shadows plan of destroying Gotham City and rid mankind of the sin, evil and corruption that stem from this city. Now it is up to Batman to save Gotham City and also to punish the evildoers in Gotham City.
Katie Holmes plays Bruce’s childhood sweetheart and also the Assistant District Attorney working to rid Gotham City of all evildoers. Batman is played by Christian Bale made famous by American Psycho and I will definitely watch out for him in his future endeavors. Gary Oldman plays a lone, honest cop in the corrupt police force in Gotham City and Batman uses his help achieving his goals of stopping The League of Shadows from destroying Gotham City and also in cleaning out the sin and filth from Gotham City.
This is a great movie, though not a classic, but I enjoyed every minute of it, which is more than I can say for its predecessors. The entire cast of this movie has done an excellent job and this movie shows how a superhero movie ought to be made.
You can read my review of The Dark Knight here.
Tags: Batman Begins, Batman Begins Review, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Colin McFarlane, Gary Oldman, Gerard Murphy, Katie Holmes, Ken Watanabe, Larry Holden, Liam Neeson, Linus Roache, The Dark Knight