Ready to rent Ready to rent (October 14, 2005)

Batman Begins

Warner Home Video VHS & DVD

2hrs 15mins

Director: Christopher Nolan

Director Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" plays like a paranoid adolescent's fantasy. Think of it as the "Heart of Darkness" for the video game generation. It is at once repellent and attractive because of its mood, which is both sleazy because of its constant, nasty veneer and almost fascist in the tone of its presentation. The whole set-up of a billionaire hero whose quest to right the wrongs of his parents death using a borrowed-black-latex-suit and an intimidating growl shows that vast monies, properly applied, can help foster into reality any delusional state.

In Nolan's film, we are taken through the familiar story: Bruce Wayne's (Christian Bale) parents are murdered and, in consequence, he suffers personally enough to play amateur avenger. After his parent's murder, Wayne grows not to be sullen and morose, but something of a Hemingway caricature, retreating to the Far East to test his character against the evils of men (which sounds silly even as I write this). Wayne essentially falls in with "The League of Shadows," a clandestine group deep in the Himalayas who act as moral watchdogs for societies. "We burnt London to the ground," growls Ducard (Liam Neeson) and Wayne figures very quickly that this, even for him, is not the guidance he was looking for.

"Batman Begins" is genuinely compelling up until its halfway point where it seems like the studio execs took over to construct a loud, bombastic piece that is somewhat repulsive. Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer create characters (Cillian Murphy's creepy, phantasmagoric Scarecrow and Michael Caine's Alfred the Butler) that really have nothing to do with the story. More so, the film is devoid of any type of devilish wit: It is all execution with a couple of bad punch lines to dot the exclamation marks. It's as if Nolan, a great filmmaker in his own right, made half a film as a demo piece for electronic stores, instead of the whole cult film that this aspires to be.

The Batman films have been a curious lot. Tim Burton, who hit his zenith as a director with his "Batman" and "Batman Returns," presented an atmosphere that was a mixture of both FAO Schwartz and ETA Hoffmann that somehow felt uniquely Burton. His emulation of hero Bruce Wayne was, in essence, a touching portrayal of a man whose only way of grieving was to act out the part of hero, and is only equaled with zeal by his list of villains. "Batman Returns" seems like a Greek tragedy played out in latex. The third installment, "Batman Forever," was different in tone, making Gotham a neon hotspot and scaling back the macabre imagery and suggestive dialogue. Although the third one was well received, the fourth installment, "Batman & Robin" was an unmitigated mess that most thought would the end to the Batman movie legacy.

However, it was graphic novelist Frank Miller that transformed Batman in the eyes of the modern public with the graphic novel, "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns." In it, Miller attempts to legitimize Batman as an American literary hero and turns his story into something of an archetype akin to the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," albeit a demented version. For Miller's Batman, it is his justice through intimidation that amplifies his sufferings to Wagnerian heights. In "Batman Begins," Nolan places his hero in this same vortex of emotion and it is this struggle that is most captivating. Unfortunately, it is not enough to save this film, which falls into the same pitfalls as "Batman Forever" and "Batman & Robin," relying too much on gaudy special effects and clichŽ dialogue. Joseph Ramirez, a Pleasanton local, moonlights full-time in the newspaper industry and part-time as a student, but his sanity-time has always been at the movies.

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