Batman Begins

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Well, it's about time, I heard somebody say. Warner Bros. had been advertising the HD-DVD edition of "Batman Begins" in all of their magazine ads, even in their disc inserts, for many months. It was one of their most-successful films in recent years, and parts of it are spectacular. Much of the film is very dark, too, literally as well as figuratively, but one of HD-DVD's strengths is resolving inner detail in darker areas of the screen. Along with its Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtracks and every extra found on the two-disc SD set and more, the HD-DVD is pretty hard to resist.

"It's not who you are underneath; it's what you do that defines you." --"Batman Begins"

The "Batman" comics were already popular when I was a kid in the 1950s, and at that time I had hoped there would be something better on the big screen than the corny 1943 serial, "The Batman," of which I had seen a chapter or two. I was doubly frustrated in the 1960s when the Adam West television series only seemed to ridicule the Caped Crusader.

So it was that I found myself among the many people standing in line on the opening day of Tim Burton's "Batman" in 1989. It had been a long wait, but it was worth it. Burton's "Batman" became one of my favorite superhero movies. Yet with each successive "Batman" movie I saw the franchise fall further and further into the campy style of the old TV show. By the third and fourth installments of the movie series, I had given up hope.

Then we got 2005's "Batman Begins," cowritten and directed by Christopher Nolan, and I was happy all over again. I found the movie spellbinding, easily among my favorite films of the year. While it didn't conjure up quite the mystique of Burton's first issue, it had, like the Burton film, abandoned the look of an old comic book for the darker, more realistic aspect of a graphic novel. I'm glad Nolan resolved to go back to square one and take everything seriously for a change, loading his cast with fine, serious actors like Michael Caine, who steals the show, and Morgan Freeman, a close second. Then, too, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, and Katie Holmes portray characters who are also plausible and well drawn. And Christian Bale is the first actor in the title role who actually fits my mental image of Batman. In Nolan's hands, this is no mere comic-book character; this is a Knight Noir.

"Batman Begins" is a rethinking of the cinematic "Batman" saga, and as the title suggests, it starts by going back to the beginnings of the "Batman" legend as suggested by the early comics. The first half of the movie, and the best part in my opinion, recounts the origins of Batman: How an angry, disillusioned young billionaire, Gotham City's Bruce Wayne, travels the ends of the Earth to study the criminal mind and grapple with his own fears, forever seeking a means to fight the injustice he sees around him.

Eventually, on the edge of nowhere, he finds the counsel he's looking for in the League of Shadows, a centuries' old secret society bent on checking world corruption. Here, he learns to look inward, face himself, and draw on his inner as well as outer strength. Besides learning new martial-arts skills, Wayne learns several other things: He discovers that theatricality and deception are powerful weapons and that "You always fear what you don't understand," notions that would presage his eventual donning of cape and mask to become the melodramatic Dark Knight.

The film takes great pains to present every detail of its plot and characters as things that might actually happen, no matter how preposterous. There is no radioactive bat biting Bruce Wayne and turning him into an instant superhero with supernatural powers. Wayne is an ordinary human being with extraordinary sensibilities, a strong physical makeup, access to high-tech gadgetry, and a ton of money. What he decides to become as "Batman" seems entirely within the realm of possibility (if not probability). Even the Batmobile, the Tumbler, is a believable real-life incarnation of the hackneyed comic-book creation.

Then, the second half of the film takes us closer to comic-book territory with a far-fetched plot involving madmen attempting to destroy the "decadent" Gotham City by pouring hallucinogenic drugs into the city's water supply and using a microwave emitter to vaporize it and cause panic in the streets. "If you'll excuse me, I have a city to destroy." While it's all very silly and tends to diminish somewhat the more realistic goings-on that preceded it, I have no strenuous objections to anything that happened. Comic-book plots are comic-book plots, no matter how earnestly their creators present them, and one has to accept such conventions if one is to appreciate any work in the genre.

Everybody in the film, heroes and villains alike, are more true-to-life than in previous "Batman" movies and come close to being almost believable in Nolan's vision. Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne may not exhibit the haunted complexities of Michael Keaton's Batman, but we are able to see in Bale's characterization a strong moral courage and a determination to do good. "What chance does Gotham have when the good people do nothing?" asks his friend Rachel (Katie Holmes). He resolves to be one of those "good people" who will stand up and fight.

Nevertheless, as sympathetic as Bale is in the role, Nolan hedges his bets by surrounding the actor with a supporting cast to die for, peripheral characters who despite their number the director weaves well into the fabric of the plot and who never detract from the movie's focus on Bruce Wayne/Batman. Michael Caine as the surrogate father figure, Alfred the butler, for example, is good enough to get his own show. I've always thought there were three actors in Hollywood who consistently transcended their material, routinely putting in great performances even when their scripts were against them, and in this movie (which does not work against them in any case) we get two of these folks: Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. (I missed only Gene Hackman among this magic three.) Freeman plays Lucius Fox, an old friend of Bruce's father whom Bruce comes to trust; and whom we come to trust just as much as Bruce does.

Liam Neeson plays Henri Ducard, a strong, tough, wise, but vaguely sinister mentor, a role Neeson seems consigned to play forever unless he puts a stop to it. Well, OK, he does it so well, one can't blame him, but really--"Star Wars," "Kingdom of Heaven," and now "Batman Begins"? Next up, it's gratifying to see Gary Oldman portraying a good guy for a change as Sgt. Gordon, and Oldman has played so many Americans in films it's hard to remember that he's British. Cillian Murphy is perfectly cast as the slimy Dr. Crane, alias "the Scarecrow"; but make no mistake, the villains are not any more superhuman than Batman is. The Scarecrow works his mischief with a crude burlap mask and a powerful hallucinogen. Then, there's Tom Wilkinson as a ruthless crime boss, Rutger Hauer as a scheming business partner, and Ken Watanabe as a shadowy cult figure, all equally up to the task. Even Katie Holmes as Bruce Wayne's romantic interest (the romance admittedly taking a backseat to the rest of the story) is fine, although she appears too young to be the Assistant District Attorney of a major city.

In a nod to "Batman Begins" fitting into the world of the earlier films as well as the comic books (several minor but notable inconsistencies aside), I liked the way Nolan ends his tale with a signal of things to come in subsequent installments. Without giving too much away, the ending tells us about the construction of a new Batcave; Sgt. Gordon's becoming Lt. Gordon, suggesting a Commissioner Gordon in the future; and, most important, the escape of a whole passel of inmates from the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, foreshadowing the various loonies dressing up in costume to commit their evildoings, one in particular who at the scene of his crimes leaves his calling card, a Joker.

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