Batman Begins

Best. Batman. Ever. There, I've said it, it's out there. Why should you beleive me? The fact of the matter is that this is not only a great Batman movie, it's a great movie all on its own.

Story


It's about time they did this one right. Every Batman movie shows Bruce's parents getting murdered, then cut forward like 20 years and then he's Batman. This one actually fills in the gap between the two showing the struggles he faced on his path towards becomming the Caped Crusader. His training by the League of Shadows was a cool twist in the origin story and made for an interesting personal grudge between Bruce and Ra's Al Ghoul (which I'm not entirely convince should be pronounced "Rawz". I preferred "Raysh" from the animated series.). The way Bruce obtained all his goodies (from Wayne Enterprises R&D) was a good idea rather than having him make all the stuff himself. I was a little worried about having the whole two villains thing (Ra's and Scarecrow) but it was pulled off with neither character being diluted, though it would have been nice to see more Scarecrow action.

Acting


Just because you have a cast of big name actors, doesn't mean you're going to get a great movie (we all remember Ocean's 12). However, the players in this film did a very good job of portraying the essence of every character. Michael Caine gave a wonderful performance as Alfred and though I was sketchy about Gary Oldman as Jim Gordan, he very much reminded me of the cop in Frank Miller's Year One storyline. Cudos. The actor playing Ra's Al Ghoul seemed like a frightening villain who could very well exist out in the real world. Cillian Murphy showed us a weird and demented Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow and as I mentioned above, it would have been nice to see a bit more of him. And last but not least, Christian Bale. Hot damn he makes a great Batman! When he's interrogating Flass (the crooked cop) by dangling him above the street, I got goosebumps from his sheer intensity. This is Batman to a tee. I look forward to seeing him reprise the role (hopefully) several times. I gave it a 4 out of 5 because of Katie Holmes. She didn't really need to be in this movie and I think they included some sort of love interest, just to show Bruce was still human. As well, it kind of takes away from having Batman as this purely singular-goal driven creature. That being said, the ending scene with them was well done and kind of addressed that issue. So maybe 4.5/5.

Special Effects and Sound


Honestly, there didn't seem to be many special effects in this movie. I expected to see an animated Batman (ala Spiderman) sneaking about the rooftops, but there was no instance (that I could tell) of this. The fight scences also all seemed to be done with stuntmen as opposed to digital actors, which I enjoyed. As well, the fight sequences weren't long and drawn out. They were quick and dirty just like a Batman fight should be. If he comes after you, you're going to go down, and go down hard. They really captured the legend of Batman with this movie, not by making it flashy and sexy, but my staying true to the source material.

Now the Batmobile had me worried when I first saw pictures of it, but on screen and in the context of why it was built, it makes perfect sense and it looks really, really cool tearing up the streets of Gotham.

The sound in the movie is top notch and gave a spooky feel to the film. I'll see it again and elaborate a bit more.

Overall


I was really impressed with this movie and it might have to take Spiderman's place as my favorite comic movie ever. I'll definately be seeing it again in theatre and buying whatever "Special Deluxe Edition" dvd they come out with. If you haven't seen it, go see it. If you've seen it, see it again. It's worth it. Hopefully the Superman movie is this good...