Now this is the Dark Knight movie that Batman fans have been waiting for: overcast, brooding, often weighed down by its own gloom, but at the same time smart, well-written and even philosophical. It is the opposite side of the intellectual coin to the crap Joel Schumacher was spinning eight years ago.
Overall, there was some pretty good acting. I've been a Christian Bale fan since Empire of the Sun, and while there's no denying the fact that sometimes he takes a role to frightening extremes, here he plays it subtle and cool. You can see the struggle going on inside without him going Sussudio all over the place.
As for the rest, Morgan Freeman is great, as usual. Tom Wilkinson pulls off a nice American gangster accent. Michael Caine, another cinematic stalwart, adds a few moments of levity. Liam basically channels Qui-Gon Jinn in his role as Bruce's mentor, but does a nice job of it. On the other hand, Katie Holmes is a weak point, I felt; too young and "cutesy" to be Bruce's voice of morality, much less an assistant district attorney. Also Cillian Murphy... this kid looks like he's barely old enough to buy beer, but he's the head of a major psychiatric institution? A couple cases of poor casting, in my opinion, but they did decent jobs in the roles they were assigned.
One of the unsung stars of this movie is the city, Gotham, itself. I read that part of this was filmed in Chicago, and certainly you can see evidence of lower Wacker in one of the chase scenes, but how they filmed that remarkable city-scape, dirty and depressed, yet huge and sprawling, with a super-imposed monorail winding through it, is well beyond me. It looked real enough that you mentally made a note never to visit that city.
Is it the quintessential comic book movie? No. I still give that title to last year's Spiderman 2. One complaint about this movie was the fight scenes. They were chopped up with the quick camera cuts of a filmmaker not comfortable with highly choreographed action. However, this has answered the prayers of the fans and, if I'm not mistaken, helped defibrillate the franchise.
Tomatometer
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Batman Begins
4 comments:
Ok, I haven't seen this yet, but I am really looking forward to it. On the Katie Holmes front, WB has resigned many of the majors but has not and apparently will not be signing Holmes on again. Of course, if she dies in the movie this is no big deal, otherwise they are just dropping her. I just realized, I still haven't seen Spiderman 2. What's wrong with me.
Regarding Katie's fate, I won't comment, but regarding Spiderman 2, in all seriousness, it is the Godfather 2 to Spiderman's Godfather.
Finally watched Spidey 2 tonight. Using your Godfather analogy, should we expect Raimi to cast one of his kids in a prominent role in Spiderman 3 and then expect everyone to pretend it never happened in about 5 or 10 years?
Only if he waits 15 years, when his career is in a major slump, to make it. On the plus side, his kid would grow up to make some pretty amazing movies. (I assume, of course, that Lost In Translation isn't going to be her only hit.)
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