Review of Batman Begins (2005) by Rickj.g. — 20 Dec 2005

After being left for dead following the disastrous "Batman and Robin", the "Batman" franchise is back better than ever with "Batman Begins". The film's creator figured rightly that the only way to revive the franchise was to start all over again by retelling the legend of Batman's origins.

Christian Bale is the first convincing Bruce Wayne/Batman for me. In "Begins", Bruce spends seven years traveling the world studying criminals and hanging out with criminals in prisons in search of revenge for the death of his wealthy parents at the hands of a homeless mugger.

Along the way he meets Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) and is taken in by a mysterious group of vigilantes known as the League of Shadows. Wayne eventually comes to reject the League's apocalyptic and immoral methods of cleansing the world of corruption and criminality.

After rejecting the League's apocalyptic methods, Bruce creates the "Batman" crime fighting character. In the end, Bruce must successfully confront the League's plan to destroy Gotham in order for his "Batman" character to succeed in his mission to save his home city from corruption and crime.

Bruce pretends to be a billionaire playboy in public as a front for not drawing any attention to who he really is after hours. This is incredibly disappointing to Bruce's love interest, idealistic junior DA Rachel Dawes (Who I think is played quite well by the much hated Katie Holmes).

Michael Cayne is a suitable Alfred and seems to be popular with fans in the role. The best supporting character is Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), the Wayne Enterprises scientific genius who has the knowledge and possession of everything Bruce needs to become Batman.

I really love it when Bruce sees "The Tumbler", a.k.a. the future Batmobile, an experimental military vehicle, and Fox seriously says to him "Oh, you wouldn't be interested in that".

The writers of the film obviously did that line for laughs and it works every time for me. Near the end when Alfred says to Bruce that it might be time to do some more work on the foundations of Wayne manner, particularly in the area of the Bat Cave, I'm left wanting to see what happens afterward.

I hope we see at least a couple more "Batman" films with Bale et al.