New Releases: Batman Begins

The latest Batman film begins on a frosty Himalayan mountaintop, worlds away from the mean underbelly of Gotham City. It's symbolic of the psychic distance we needed to get from those Joel Schumacher disasters, but what is Bob Kane's Batman doing engaging in martial-arts battles in the wilds of Asia? Well, kids, when you spend over $100 million on an action movie, it needs to have enough international appeal to assure that investors will be able to recoup their....oh, nevermind.

The new Bruce Wayne (American Psycho's Christian Bale) has given up his 'puttin' on the ritz' lifestyle to become a fashionably-stubbled hobo, walking the globe and trying to find his inner flying rodent. You see, ever since his parents' gruesome dispatch at the hands of a street tough, Bruce has been obsessed with understanding the criminal mind. And since all poor people are criminals, he has decided to become one with the seldom-washed.

When we first meet Bruce in the film, his bum adventures have led him to the inaccessible mountain monastery of an order of super-criminals. They're evil incarnate, but they don't prey on the innocent; they eat mob bosses for breakfast. The Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) network feeds on criminal plankton to keep the food-chain harmonious.

Gotham City is top-heavy with crime, and Bruce Wayne agrees to learn the ways of the Ra's so that he can clean the city his industrialist father once helped to build. So, for the first half-hour of the film, he (and we) must endure the turgid crypto-burblings of a curiously-bearded Kinsey (ye shall know him by his toiletbrush goatee). The soundtrack thunders with rock-socky martial-arts training, as Bruce the man becomes Bruce the crime-fighting machine.

Shame on Warner Brothers, I say. Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman should have been left alone. It is a towering masterpiece of nouveau-goth; a classic that bleeds together film noir, expressionism and cirque du soleil to create a world where ghouls rise from the city sludge and meet their equally corrupt but smaller-hearted rivals, the cigar-chewing coppers. God, it's a great movie. Burton's Batman sits atop the superhero mountain as the best example of the genre in American film - and if you don't agree, then you've got bats in the belfry.

A few observations about this new 2005 Batman: I'm not sure how I feel about the new Batsuit, with or without nips. The face-mask is wider and does less to hood the eyes, which added so much to Michael Keaton's performance. The flat Keaton mask has also been upgraded to include a pointed, aquiline beak. Christian Bale's visage is a little too gum-chewy and tongueish to pull it off; Keaton could actually flex his cheek muscles when he was giving the upside-down eyeball to some thug he had just lassoed and borne aloft.

Speaking of thugs, am I dreaming or was Gary Oldman actually wasted in a superhero movie? I'm shocked to say that's the case. He plays a paunchy, mustachioed detective and he's so boring and lifeless on the screen that I was expecting to be surprised: I thought for sure he was going to fall into a vat of acid and emerge as The Joker's transsexual antelope-hornedmother-in-law. I mean, it's Gary Oldman. You wanna get nuts? Come on - let's get nuts.

Also, the entire Q-angle feels boosted from James Bond. Why are we subjected to endless scenes of Batman learning the wherefors and whatnots of how to throw agrappling hook or stock a utility belt? Yes, there's an air of credibility lent to the proceedings because the bat-gadgets are knocked together by white America's favorite non-threatening black actor, but I still think that we could have had a tighter movie if this subplot had been eliminated.

Now for the positive: Cillian Murphy is a revelation; he plays Scarecrow as a feral, viperous Adam Ant figure who hides behind feminine glasses and seems ready to laugh himself right out of the fourth wall. I especially like the short little scene where he starts to dig on himself as Batman's nemesis. He should have had much more to do in this movie. I also like the way he and the other villains adopted table-read wardrobe for the entire picture. No elaborate costumes, whatsoever.

I was also surprised by how much I didn't hate the performance of Katie Holmes. I'm often annoyed when a stock character is included and given so little screen time as to rub their superfluousness in your face. But in this case she's actually important to the movie, and her acting is up to snuff. She seems to be relaxed in her role, and confident. Almost like she's at peace in her personal life. Almost like she's embraced some wonderful, life-changing philosophy....

Of course the villains have a scheme to kill everyone in Gotham - that goes without saying. I'm really bone-tired of movies that draft me into a complex 'save the city' plan that takes at least thirty minutes and always ends with a big crash and lots of twisted metal. I was expecting something a little different here (only because I didn't think they had the budget), but I was disappointed. It's the same old ball of wax. Except for the car-chase footage with the new Batmobile (an SUV from hell), the whole busy-ness of the movie's climax left me cold.

I'm sure I've made this sound like an awful film - a shameless attempt to back up the Brinks truck - but it's actually really well-made. It's a fully-realized adventure with all the bells and whistles and even little moments that made a good superhero movie. (I actually laughed at the scene with the broads in the hotel pool) All the critics who are praising it aren't suffering from mass hysteria or anything. But nothing can top the original Batman. Am I the only one who remembers The Joker walking around the art gallery with a giant boombox, blasting Prince?

Prince, people. Prince.