From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Like a bat out of hell

Holy rebirth, Batman! The Dark Knight returns to his roots in Batman Begins.

by Barbara Lester

June 15 2005

After the Batman franchise was run aground by director Joel Schumacher in 1995's Batman Forever and, even worse, 1997's Batman and Robin, moviegoers needed a break from the Caped Crusader, whose cape was starting to fray. Enter X-Men and Spider-Man, and soon, the mortal Dark Knight looked a little wimpy and worn beside these superpowered heroes. So what was it going to take to revive this angry, strangely dressed guy?

How about a good movie with a dark edge? That's what director Christopher Nolan, who so effectively mined the intricacies of memory in 2001's Memento, delivers in Batman Begins, an authentic thriller that reinvents the whole series. Brilliant director Tim Burton had brought his skewed vision to Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). But he was in comic book mode, maintaining some of the campiness of the 1960s TV series. And Schumacher simply didn't grasp the gestalt of Batman. Nolan, who co-wrote Batman Begins with David S. Goyer (Blade, Dark City and Crow: City of Angels), brings a grittier realism to the new movie. They also introduce some of the popular conventions of the action-thriller, so it doesn't feel like a comic book anymore.

Still, the big question is, How successful is actor Christian Bale (American Psycho, Velvet Goldmine) in reviving the Bruce Wayne/Batman dual persona? He's very good, topping Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney. Since Bale is such a physical actor -- he lost a third of his body weight for 2004's The Machinist -- he convincingly beefed up for Batman and even has the rogue attitude to carry off Wayne's billionaire-playboy lifestyle.

In the beginning of Begins, Wayne has spent seven years wanwandering the world to find himself and the means to fight injustice. In the criminal underworld of Bhutan, he seeks some sort of lethal nirvana with a character named Ducard (Liam Neeson), who takes him to a vigilante group called the League of Shadows. The scenes with these ninjalike characters are the movie's weakest. But Wayne isn't interested in revenge -- he wants justice.

So he bolts from the group and returns to Gotham to reclaim his legacy. Unfortunately, he discovers that CEO Richard Earle (Rutger Hauer) has usurped his company, Wayne Enterprises, from him. Back at the family mansion, faithful butler and all-around good friend Alfred (Michael Caine) welcomes the young master.

Wayne decides to adopt bats as a model for not only his sartorial splendor but also his sweeping intention to help the police fight the inordinate amount of crime in Gotham. In designing his accouterments, Wayne gets plenty of help from the head of his company's Applied Sciences division, Lucius Fox. Morgan Freeman, who won an Oscar earlier this year for his role in Million Dollar Baby, plays Fox in his usual kindly manner. Fox is to Batman what Q is to James Bond, providing him with gadgets galore, including his new, pimped-out Batmobile, part Sherman tank and part Ferrari.

Katie Holmes, who has certainly left Dawson's Creek behind, offers some touchy-feely moments as childhood buddy Rachel Dawes, an assistant district attorney who still has a schoolgirl crush on Wayne.

The cast amounts to a surfeit of riches. Gary Oldman plays Jim Gordon, the police detective whom Batman seeks to assist, and Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom) portrays Carmine Falcone, Gotham's ruthless crime boss. A frighteningly good Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later) takes on the role of evil Dr. Jonathan Crane, who runs the city's infamous Arkham Asylum. He is one of the movie's most dastardly characters, as he fights his enemies with weaponized hallucinogens, puts on a burlap mask that seems to drive everyone into paranoid insanity and transforms into his awful alter ego, Scarecrow.

The darkness of Gotham's design is always critical to a Batman movie's success, and in Batman Begins, the city is modern and gleaming but nonetheless dark and dank. A creaky train circles the city, enclosing a ghetto island of crime that has a Blade Runner desperation to it.

The best part of Batman Begins is that Nolan and Goyer create an impressively involving story. Capturing the darkness of Frank Miller's graphic novel Batman: Year One (see review at right), the movie is simply a good detective story incorporating a really scary threat and a deep bench of fine actors. Nolan has essentially reconceived the Batman movie franchise, and Batman Begins leaves open the possibility of continuing the series anew, which would be a welcome development.