As the title
suggests, this sets out to be radically different from the series inaugurated
by Tim Burton's Batman in 1989 and trashed by Joel Schumacher's Batman &
Robin in 1997. Indeed, director Christopher Nolan gets even further than Burton
from the camp of the 1960s TV show, to the point where you wonder how
cartoonish Bat-foes like the Penguin could ever appear in Nolan's rusty,
economically desperate Gotham City.
Whereas Burton
sketched an Art Deco hell and shoved Michael Keaton on screen in a Bat-suit in
the first minutes, Nolan puts off the moment when Christian Bale dons the mask
for almost an hour. Influenced by the look and feel of the X-Men films, Batman
Begins spends a lot of time in a world only just removed from reality before getting
to the superheroics.The first act finds Wayne in a Chinese prison and a
Himalayan monastery, transforming from bearded brawler to black-clad ninja as
he flashes back to a lifetime of trauma that - in this version - began even
before his parents' deaths, as he falls down a well and is terrorised by the
bats which later inspire his night persona. Burton had Wayne's mom and pop
killed by the hoodlum who would become The Joker, but Nolan reverts to earlier
comics and makes the murderer a panicky no-one named Joe Chill, blurring the
set-up so young Bruce and even Wayne Sr. (Linus Roache) must take some blame
for the killings.
The Nolan who
made Memento and Insomnia is at home with extreme psychological states - this
might complete a Three Colours Of Neurosis trilogy by following memory loss and
sleeplessness with phobia. It's certainly a smart move to cast the former
Patrick Bateman as a Batman who always seems about to crack up. Bale even makes
the old playboy-idiot act work, suggesting - as Michael Caine's dry Alfred
notes - a man who needs to pretend to have fun because he might accidentally
enjoy himself.
Batman
maintains a secret identity, but he's recruiting an army for a war - forming
alliances with Gordon (Oldman), the only honest cop in Gotham, and Wayne
Enterprises' R&D man Lucius Fox (Freeman), while treating childhood
sweetheart/Assistant D. A. Rachel Dawes (Holmes) as much as an informant as
love interest (she takes the role played in comics by Harvey Dent, who becomes
the disfigured villain Two-Face, suggesting a possible career-changing stretch
for Holmes if this thread carries through).
With a city
that looks less fantastical than Burton's, Nolan hits the streets and slums of
Gotham to show a horrific escalation of evil that demands Batman's presence
even as Gordon suggests he might make it worse; old-fashioned Mob guys (Tom
Wilkinson) are edged out by masked freaks (Cillian Murphy, starily creepy even
before he pulls on his Scarecrow hood) and a fanatical force run by the bastard
sons of Fu Manchu and Osama bin Laden. Unlike Burton, Nolan doesn't skimp on
action either, with brutal fights, vehicle chases and, in one great sequence, a
mass escape from Arkham Asylum of serial killers and maniacs doped up with the
Scarecrow's fear serum.
In terms of
big-screen comic-adaptation triumphs, it's recently been Marvel who've been
ahead (X-Men, Blade, Spider-Man); but, by learning several tricks from Marvel
franchises, Batman Begins undoubtedly gets rival comics house DC back in the
game.
Grade - A+
Significantly
grittier than previous Bat-beginnings, this finds new things to do with, and
say about, a character who's been around since 1938. In a year when the
franchise watchword is "dark", this delivers the full noir with a
side order of dementia.
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