Batman Begins
The loss. The anger. The guilt. The training. The car. The city. The cape. The cowl.
This is no cartoon. It's finally real. This is how it's supposed to be.
As an avid Batman reader in my youth, I've been waiting for a great Batman film my whole life, and director Christopher Nolan has resurrected the franchise from the festering cesspool Joel Schumacher left it in and delivered me to movie-geek heaven.
Other superheroes in the comic book realm have super powers, and a universe must be created to fit them. But Batman has none. He's just a man who uses his brain, brawn, willpower and infinite monetary resources to combat evil. It is a real world—our world—and the economically-depressed, crime-ridden Gotham of Batman Begins' feels very real. With that solid cornerstone in place, Nolan and co-screenwriter David Goyer construct the rest of Batman Begins with great aplomb.
The psychological torture endured by Bruce Wayne in the years after his parents' murder leads him to wander the globe, committing desperate, violent, directionless attacks against criminals driven by anger, guilt, and fear. His subsequent recruitment and training by the League of Shadows, an organization of ninjas led by the mysterious Ra's Ah Ghul, teaches him to overcome his fear and gives a purpose to his rage: to defend those who cannot defend themselves.
Batman Begins really shines upon Bruce Wayne's return to Gotham. Old relationships are revisited: His faithful butler Alfred, played by Michael Caine as more of a mentor than a manservant. New ones are forged: Sgt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, finally playing a good guy), the only honest cop in town, and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), the science genius at Wayne Enterprises who equips Bruce Wayne with his tools of the trade, including that amazing automobile, which replaces the sports car sleekness of previous Batmobiles with the practicality of a combat vehicle.
Most importantly, however, is Batman's screen presence, both in terms of Nolan's visual presentation and Christian Bale's fiercely captivating performance. The criminals are petrified. They fear this Caped Crusader—who moves among the shadows with an eerie grace, striking with efficient precision—the way a teenager in a slasher movie fears the ax-wielding maniac. Batman is the terrifying representation of the kind of justice every criminal truly fears.
That's where the terror ends, however, because Nolan and Goyer go out of their way to make Batman's ethos clear: He does not kill. For someone whose vigilante tactics are rightly suspect, the temptation to become that which he fights against would be irresistible if the value of human life were not preserved. Nolan and Goyer must be applauded for not succumbing to the purposeless violent wasteland most Hollywood action movies have become.
By the time the full breadth of the plot against Gotham City is revealed and resolved, the set-up for the sequel is almost as gratifying the film we've just seen, and that is another true mark of Batman Begins' greatness.
Memo to Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros., et al: Take your time and get it right again. If it takes two years or five years, we Batman fans will be here waiting. We waited much of our lives for this one; we can a wait a little longer for an equally enjoyable sequel.