Film reviews
Title: Batman Begins
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman
Reviewer: Matt Eccles
Rating (out of 10): 8
Review:
Directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan and featuring a cast that includes Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman, the question about Batman Begins was: how could it possibly fail? The answer, it turns out, is easy. It doesn’t. On the contrary, Batman Begins, like Sin City, is a classy comic-book adaptation that wholly merits enthusiasm for forthcoming sequels.
Nolan and co-screenwriter David S. Goyer (here redeeming himself after Blade: Trinity) have bravely wiped clean the slate muddied by certain previous versions and started the story from the outset.
After the weighty exposition of Bruce Wayne’s childhood traumas and, years layer, his incarceration and training in a remote Chinese village, Nolan starts up the fireworks back in Gotham City, as Wayne’s alter-ego becomes embroiled in a sinister plot that appears to have a gangster kingpin (Tom Wilkinson) and corrupt doctor (Cillian Murphy) at its centre.
Christian Bale has been astutely cast as the Dark Knight and, even though it is a while until he dons the suit, he helps make the earlier films of Tim Burton et al a very fuzzy memory indeed. The rest of the quality cast are equally fine and, although sometimes the plot feels secondary to the establishment of the characters, this is by far 2005’s most impressive super-hero flick.