I'm one of the multitudes who have grown increasingly disenchanted with the Batman franchise. About the time Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone hit the set, I lost all hope for its redemption. But then the previews for Batman Begins came out and, in spite of myself, I was intrigued. So last week, on a dark and stormy night, Nick and I made our way to the theater and plunked down our eight and a half bucks. We were not disappointed. Forget the original Batman campfest. Forget the increasingly painful sequels. The new Batman is dark, like the graphic novels, and really, really good.

For one thing, I don't think Christian Bale has ever done a bad movie. (A possible exception is Captain Corelli's Mandolin, which looked to be no more than a vehicle for Nicholas Cage's crappy Italian accent: "Bella bambino, 2 o'clock!") But Bale is very picky about his scripts, and once he's selected one, he's obsessively committed to the role. (See my review of "The Machinist" for further detail on this.) The fact that he signed on for Batman Begins gave me tremendous cause for optimism. As I expected, he was great. We also have compelling performances from Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine (adding a spark of humor and depth to the character of Alfred), Liam Neeson, and Gary Oldman. Ms. Scientologist Katie Holmes also appears as the D.A.'s assistant who was friends with Bruce Wayne as a child and has grown into a convenient love interest. She comes off as a little too silly and idealistic here, but overall she's not a bad choice. I would have preferred someone a little more multi-faceted, but then again, if I had my way, Maggie Gyllenhaal would be playing every female lead until the end of time. So there. Oh, and I should also mention that the film is directed by Christopher Nolan, who brought us the freaky, mind-tripping Memento a few years back.

Typically, superhero origin movies are pretty unbalanced. That's the way I felt about the first X-Men film, which painstakingly chronicled the convergence of our favorite mutant heroes before spewing out an embarrassing "action" sequence in the last ten minutes. Other times you get the half-n-half problem, where Part I is childhood/adolescent drama and Part II is nailbiting action—like two different films were randomly spliced together. You would almost think it was impossible to develop a hero in a compelling way and still have time for a decent amount of excitement. But Batman Begins never once feels out of balance or rushed. It unfolds at its own pace, the shift from hero-genesis to action is seamless and, somehow, there is ample time for the face-off between protagonist and villain.

(DANGER: THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS.)

And speaking of villains, Batman Begins features the Scarecrow, one of the second-tier villains who nevertheless creeped me out in a first-tier kind of way. Scarecrow's alter ego is asylum director Dr. Jonathan Crane, and the actor they picked to play him (Cillian Murphy) is perfect. Remember him from 28 Days Later? No, the zombie film, not that stupid rehab thing. Anyway, he has these weird blue eyes that look unbelievably sinister; they seem to radiate an eerie blue fog reminiscent of a post-spice Muad'Dib in David Lynch's Dune. Before I knew he was the villain, I remember thinking to myself, "Why in the world did they pick this guy for a throwaway role? His eyes are so creepy and distracting." Soon it became clear that this was the intent all along. As the director of the city asylum, he dons a burlap "Scarecrow" mask and experiments on his patients using an inhaled hallucinogenic that induces panic. This results in a phenomenon Nicks referred to as "insane-o-vision," in which we get to see freaky, surrealistic images that approximate what the victim is seeing while under the influence of the hallucinogen. These are some truly impressive effects, and—thankfully—they never get too campy.

Of course, the great thing about Batman as a hero is that he is just a regular guy, with no superpowers (unless being rich is a superpower). He does benefit from a lot of cool technology, though, and this film shows us exactly where he gets it. The body portion of the Batsuit is a piece of prototype armor developed for desert warfare but deemed too expensive for large-scale distribution. The Batmobile is an armored vehicle more like an aerodynamic tank than a car. But the most important accomplishment of the film is that we get to see who Bruce Wayne is as and was a person. We see him as a frightened child, a reckless and bitter adolescent, and a troubled young man who would rather rot in some Asian prison camp than face the painful truths about himself. The other movies only dared to show us Batman at a point of smug self-actualization, where a bloodless Keaton/Clooney/Kilmer could deliver witticism after witticism without even a sliver of vulnerability showing through. But it's almost like director Christopher Nolan decided to pretend these other films didn't exist, so determined was he to get to the core mythos of the Batman legend. And I think he did exactly that. In one scene, Bruce Wayne explains to Alfred about his planned transformation, saying that although a man can be defeated, cast aside, or trivialized, a symbol cannot. "As a symbol," he says, "I could be incorruptible." This is what it's all about, really. This is why the character has always resonated with people through the years—he's the flesh-n-blood everyman who takes on the gods, and is therefore a better vessel for our own dreams of greatness. This Batman learns to use theatricality to spread fear among the enemy and inspire hope among the good guys. And he chooses a symbol that is personally frightening to him because of a childhood incident and because, in a sense, it represents his sense of guilt concerning the death of his parents. This is pretty deep stuff for an action movie. For any movie, really.

(Sidenote: Bruce Wayne never specifies whether the bat he has in mind is of the fruit, vampire, or Northern Yellow variety. Sorry to disappoint the chiroptologists out there.)

Anyway, check out Batman Begins. You'll find yourself wondering what might have happened if this film had been made first. At the very least, we would have been spared Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. Talk about insane-o-vision.

Tags: movies