Film Review: Batman Begins (dir. C. Nolan, 2005)

This is an above average superhero movie, although given recent offerings (The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Elecktra(!)) it's not that hard to be above average. Christian Bale is a better Bruce Wayne/Batman than George Clooney, although he's no Michael Keaton. (Val Kilmer is generally great, but he was not a very good Batman, in my opinion. So Bale is better than Kilmer, too.) Let me just say that Katie Holmes is sort-of attractive, but she's no Kim Basinger.

But maybe comparisons to other Batman movies are not appropriate, because this is an all-new Batman story. We see Bruce Wayne's parents killed, again, but not by the Joker this time. We see a new backstory detailing Bruce Wayne's training as a Jedi, er, I mean, what is the term . . . ninja. I get confused here, because his mentor is Liam Neeson, a/k/a Qui-Gon Jinn. Neeson is also the villain, which isn't giving anything away. As usual, the villain's plot "to destroy Gotham" is brilliant, if overkill. As many of my usual readers know, I'm rather tired of martial arts violence, so a lot of the movie left me pretty cold.

And, of course, Batman prevails. There are a lot of special effects, computer animation, etc.

Ho-hum. I need to watch more movies like House of Sand and Fog and fewer like Batman Begins. But I try to keep current with popular cinema . . . although, to be honest, I've never seen either of the recent-ish Spiderman movies.