Batman Begins (2005): Batman Out of Hell

Sequels, prequels, remakes, re-releases, “re-imaginings”, comic adaptations – These are what now constitute the bulk of Hollywood’s output, particularly over the summer months. The more cynical among us might suggest that this trend is indicative of Hollywood’s inability, or unwillingness, to think up exciting new ideas of its own. After all, if you can turn a few bucks re-packaging Charlie’s Angels, The Hulk, Starsky and Hutch and pretty much any old TV show or comic you care to mention, why waste the effort exercising your brain on something as strenuous as original thought?

It is a fair point. There have been some risible stinkers churned out as a result of this tiresome mindset (Catwoman, Elektra, Daredevil, Blade: Trinity), but it can’t be denied that there have also been notable successes when the right bods have been at the helm. Bryan Singer brought moral depth and intelligence to his impressive X-Men films, Sam Raimi delivered an enjoyable trio of Spider-Man stories, Jon Favreau turned in the smart and witty Iron Man, and in 2005 Christopher Nolan took on Batman, a task not to be underestimated.

After starting strongly with the gothic stylings of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman and the gleefully twisted perversions of Batman Returns, the Caped Crusader finally endured his downfall at the hands of an enemy who mercileslly mugged him of his credibility and status as a surefire box office goldmine, in the form of Joel Schumacher.

The rotten Batman Forever and the legendarily awful Batman and Robin delivered a double whammy of disaster which ensured the franchise was to be found sleeping rough under a bridge with a bottle of meths for the next 8 years. However, there was no way that would be the last we’d hear of him. Despite the derision afforded to the last two filmed installments, there had always been the feeling that the real Batman had never been properly portrayed on screen.

Warner Bros, still wincing at the memory of their critical and commercial flaying in the wake of Batman & Robin, had learned their lesson and brought in a director with artistic clout and credibility in the form of Nolan, and opted to shoot David S. Goyer’s origin story. The result was the most accurate and convincing treatment of the character yet seen. Batman Begins is a muscular, scowling action film of oppressive darkness, which takes us inside the raging heart of a man who spends his nights dressing in bulletproof fetish gear and beating up scumbags. Which, frankly, is my kind of film.

Following a great opening shot of a vast cloud of bats scudding across a yellow sunset, we meet Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne, a billionaire who is slumming it in a Bhutanese prison and whiling away his days battering his fellow prisoners senseless. Bruce is haunted by the death of his parents at the hands of a street mugger, and the memory of falling into a vast cave and disturbing a huge nest of irate bats. He is, clearly, searching for something, and salvation arrives in the form of zen-like ninja master Henri Ducard (the ever-excellent Liam Neeson), who instructs Bruce to bring a rare blue flower to his monastery, which is located on a snow-capped mountain.

Once there, he thanks Bruce by giving him a good kicking, but it’s all part of the training. Ducard is the right-hand man of Ra’s Al Ghul, the mysterious leader of the League of Shadows, an organisation dedicated to wiping out the forces of evil and corruption through the use of extreme means. It all gets a little too extreme for Bruce, who is unwilling to kill a common thief brought before him for execution, so he burns the place down and heads home to Gotham, the scene of his parents murder years before.

Meeting up with the family butler Alfred (Michael Caine), who has kept the home fires burning, Bruce begins to make plans “to turn fear against those who prey on the fearful”, realising that as a symbol he will be more powerful than a mere man. After showing his face at Wayne Enterprises, the company he owns but which is being sold off by greedy interim chairman Earle (a battered-looking Rutger Hauer), he finds genius inventor Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) lurking in a basement surrounded by all manner of funky grappling guns, body armour, and prototype military vehicles, which handily turns out to be just what Bruce needs. As he prepares to take on the might of old-school crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), he catches sight of a bat flapping around in his study, which triggers the dark memories he decides to turn to his advantage.

Straight from the start, this movie is more violent and reality-based than any other comic-based film before it. The drama builds slowly around Bruce as he absorbs Ducard’s teachings and empowers himself as a fearsome warrior, yet finds a moral centre which forms the core of the Batman character – To fight injustice without surrendering totally to anger and the desire for revenge. Nolan and Goyer were clearly mindful of the fact that in the previous movies Bruce Wayne played second fiddle to the show-stealing villains, hence here Wayne is very much the central (and most interesting) character. Following his journey from childhood trauma to sculpting his dark alter-ego ensures the audience are watching this for the Batman himself, and not to see which Hollywood superstar is going to chew the scenery.

And how lucky it was that Christian Bale decided to play this part – He gives a definitive performance in the title role, a barely-contained force of nature with a fearsomely gravelly voice. At times, he appears more of a wild beast than a man in a costume, recalling the eponymous hero of Sam Raimi’s Darkman, and banishing the memories of Kilmer and Clooney.

The rest of the cast do a fine job, particularly Freeman’s sly inventor, and Caine’s wittily judged performance as Alfred. Gary Oldman is cast effectively against type as Gotham’s last decent cop, Jim Gordon, Cillian Murphy is spookily ethereal as the insane psychiatrist Jonathan Crane aka the Scarecrow, and Liam Neeson gets to play the villain for once in his role as a father-figure turned madman. Katie Holmes unfortunately sounds a rather weak note as Wayne’s childhood sweetheart, but what would a summer blockbuster be without a pointless romantic subplot?

Although Batman himself does not appear until about an hour into the film, the story is compelling enough to keep you fairly well gripped, and the anticipation is well rewarded. This Batman doesn’t mess about – He punches hard, emerges silently from shadows and scares the hell out of would-be evildoers. He’s an angry, avenging demon who brings damnation and bruises, just as he is in the comics.

One glimpse at his car and you know that whoever drives it is not a man with whom to screw. The Batmobile is here brilliantly reinvented as a monstrous, roaring, mammoth-wheeled bastard far more suited to the rigours of modern crime fighting than the sleekly-styled sex toys of the previous films. In one of the film’s best sequences, it tears through the city streets and freeways leaving a trail of devastation and shell-shocked drivers behind.

As good as the film is, there are some definite flaws. Cillian Murphy is woefully underused as the Scarecrow – Indeed, the actual Scarecrow character can’t be in it for more than a couple of minutes. It’s a great shame that such a potentially great villain (certainly more interesting than the Riddler or Poison Ivy, for example) is wasted, and dealt with inconclusively. Tom Wilkinson puts on a good show as the last old-style crime boss, but is dealt with rather abruptly and I unfortunately find it hard to take him seriously as a villain without thinking of him in his underwear in The Full Monty. The action sequences are generally excellent, and there is a laudable lack of glossy CGI, but the hand-to-hand fight scenes are marred by dark close-ups which render it almost impossible to see what’s going on.

The biggest disappointment is the direction the plot veers off in for the climax. This movie’s biggest asset is in its sense of back-to-basics realism following the garish tomfoolery of the Schumacher years, but the climax unfortunately reverts to standard Hollywood type, with our hero performing some ludicrously impossible stunts, and frantically racing to stop a totally implausible super-weapon from devastating the city. A psychological and physical well-directed fight would have been more than sufficient and kept the film within the boundaries it defined for itself in the first half, but Nolan and Goyer almost ruin everything with a bad Bond-style plot device, which could have come straight from any of the previous movies.

Still, the rest of the movie is good enough for the daft ending not to overly affect any enjoyment to be had. Although it’s not a perfect film, Batman Begins could claim (until the release of 2008’s all-conquering The Dark Knight) to have been the best Batman movie. The final scene here tantalisingly hints at the direction of the sequel, and The Dark Knight would take the character boldly into territory hitherto unexplored in modern superhero movies.