June 15, 2005 | A Batman movie in which the Caped Crusader, not a flamboyant bad guy, is the real star? What a concept!
But wait, there’s more: In Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s dauntingly ambitious and powerfully impressive attempt to revive the comic-book movie franchise that was near-fatally stalled by the campy excess of Batman and Robin (1997), billionaire Bruce Wayne is every bit as prominent and compelling as his Batmanly alter ego.
And with good reason. Go ahead, take another look at the title – it’s Batman Begins, not Batman Continues. Working from an irony-free screenplay he co-wrote with David S. Goyer (the scribe responsible for the Blade trilogy), Nolan has returned to the roots of the Batman mythos to craft a witness-at-creation extravaganza that artfully balances seriousness of purpose and essentials of showmanship. (Better still, he’s made a movie that moves much faster and smoother than Tim Burton’s visually striking but dramatically plodding Batman adventures.) Infusing his revisionist re-telling with as much physical and psychological realism as the fantastical source material can bear, Nolan – the mastermind behind the time-twisty Memento – probes into the story behind the story, to answer the questions raised by the actions.
Questions like: Why did Bruce Wayne become Batman in the first place? (Why not, say, Catman?) How did a pampered rich kid get so heroically tough and buff? When did he move into the Bat Cave? And where did he get all those nifty crimefighting gizmos?
In the world according to Nolan and Goyer, young Bruce Wayne (played in flashbacks by Gus Lewis) suffers the twin traumas of a close encounter with marauding bats, and an up-close view of his wealthy parents’ murder at the hands of gun-wielding mugger. Charged with alternating currents of guilt and rage, he devotes his early adulthood to wandering the earth in search of a means to wreak revenge.
As a grim grown-up played by the broodingly hunky Christian Bale, Wayne winds up in a dreadful Asian prison where his daily exercise regimen – he single-handedly smacks down dozens of fellow inmates – attracts the attention of Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), a sort of talent scout for the League of Shadows, mystic vigilantes led by the mysterious Ra’s al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). Ducard springs Wayne from prison and teaches his new recruit the finer points of anger management, fear diminishment and whup-ass ninja warfare.
Wayne is a quick study, but he objects to the harsh justice dispensed by Ducard’s confederates. (These guys likely would think God was too soft on Sodom and Gomorrah.) So he returns to his hometown of Gotham City, eager to rid the increasingly corrupt metropolis of crime bosses like Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and fearsome villains like The Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy).
To fulfill his Dark Knight destiny, Wayne relies heavily on his lethal training and fabulous wealth to transform himself into Batman. (See, he’s taking to heart Ducard’s advice about channeling his worst fears into… well, you get the picture.) To make this transformation seriously entertaining and at least halfway plausible, Nolan relies heavily on sterling contributions from priceless supporting players: Michael Caine as Alfred, Wayne’s unswervingly loyal but not infinitely patient butler; Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, a Wayne Enterprises researcher who provides our hero with Batmanly body armor and a tricked-out Batmobile; Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, the last honest cop in Gotham City; and, though she looks a tad young for the part, Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes, a crusading assistant D.A. who wishes her old friend Bruce Wayne weren’t such an irresponsible libertine.
Even without a Joker in the deck, it would be hard for most actors to keep from being overshadowed in such company. But Bale is hale and hearty enough to command attention at all times – yes, even when he’s not wearing the Batmask – and to sustain a sense of heart and soul beneath the sound and fury during the movie’s consistently exciting but comparably conventional final act. Thanks largely to his performance and Nolan’s proficiency, this Batman soars.
