Review of Batman Begins (2005) by Hawkeye766 — 01 Oct 2016

The first installment in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is everything that an origin story, especially one about The Batman should be. It features excellent acting, perfectly paced writing, and a thoroughly satisfying adaptation of the character.

Even if it didn't garner the success that it has, this movie could have gone very far on merit of its cast alone. Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox, Michael Caine's Alfred, and Liam Neeson's Ras al Ghul, are all perfect representations of their comic counterparts, and are highly entertaining. Bale plays a great Bruce Wayne, naive, and disillusioned at first, and confident and motivated later on in the film. And that raspy voice of his; well, that's just cool.

Nolan wrote this movie perfectly. Batman is really not even a character, until midway through the second act. Bruce Wayne undergoes a journey around the world, seeking to understand criminality, and training with the league of assassins where he comes to understand combat, and stealth tactics. The batsuit is explained also through a series of technological innovations that happened to be too expensive for mass production. Although this is a Batman movie, it is really a story about fear. The movie's villain Scarecrow seeks to control others with fear, and Batman uses his own fear of bats, to fight back against the injustices of the underworld.

The movie transcends the superhero genre. The action sequences, though immensely gratifying are not the film's focal point and are used to amplify the story's message. Batman begins is the first movie to truly understand what batman is about. It is about a man, who's life is plagued by fear; a man who has fallen down in life, time and time again, and who finally finds the courage to face his fear, and save his city.