Comic-book fans have been salivating for months over Batman Begins, the latest take on the legendary superhero and the first to hit theaters since 1997's much-maligned Batman & Robin, directed by Joel Schumacher. Begins is, if you believe the hype, the first Batman film to "get it right," to offer the Batman mythos undiluted by camp (like the 1960s TV series and Schumacher's films) or quirky stylistic flourishes (like Tim Burton's films or the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series). Indeed, director and co-writer Christopher Nolan takes Batman seriously and grounds his story in the closest thing you can get to realism in a movie about a guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime.
That seriousness and realism are both the film's biggest selling points and its greatest weaknesses. We don't even see billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) put on the bat suit until an hour into the two-and-a-half-hour film, instead spending our time watching him agonize over the deaths of his parents at the hands of a street criminal and train with mysterious mentor Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). Nolan and co-writer David S. Goyer, who is something of a comic-book movie guru (he wrote all three Blade movies, The Crow: City of Angels and co-wrote the upcoming Ghost Rider) go heavy on portentous, heavy-handed dialogue, setting up the Serious Subject the film addresses over and over again: fear, and its various causes, applications and remedies.
As an angry young man, Bruce leaves his native Gotham City and wanders the mountains of an unnamed Asian country, encountering Ducard, as well as the mysterious Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe), whose League of Shadows is dedicated to ending crime by any means necessary. Bruce repudiates that agenda, though, returning to Gotham after he is presumed dead, to take up the mantle of Batman and fight criminals without becoming one himself.
That whole process takes way, way too long, and although there is a nice action sequence at Ghul's mountain hideaway, the film's first half is remarkably slow and heavy on deep-sounding pronouncements like, "To conquer fear, you must become fear," that don't actually mean anything. Once Bruce finally makes his way back to Gotham—reuniting with wry butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), who is now an assistant district attorney—and Batman actually begins, Begins almost becomes a different movie, shifting from angsty psychological drama to more conventional action thriller.
Nolan's villains are Ghul, crime lord Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), the inventor of a fear-inducing hallucinogen who also goes by the nom de crime Scarecrow. None have the over-the-top flair of Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman (still the best big-screen version of the Dark Knight); aside from the Scarecrow's mask, none of them even wears a costume. Nor does anyone in the film have any super powers, and only Batman bothers with a secret identity.
Plot-wise, by the time the requisite threat to Gotham City arises halfway through the movie, it feels like an afterthought, and it's hard to invest much caring in how it turns out. Nolan does pull off one relative feat for a movie based on such familiar source material: He manages a surprising third-act twist that actually resonates well with what has come before.
But in his quest to take it all so seriously, Nolan drains almost all of the fun out of the Batman story. Die-hard comics fans may rejoice that their beloved characters are being treated with deadly earnestness, and the costume nipples of the Schumacher days are not exactly missed, but Nolan's film is so meticulous and careful that it often feels lifeless. His cast, full to bursting with classy, respected actors in even the smaller parts (Gary Oldman as honest cop Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as gadget guru Lucius Fox) play everything with restraint, including the villainy. Murphy is probably the most soft-spoken evildoer ever to menace Gotham City.
There are moments of levity, mostly courtesy of Caine, and it's hard to fault any of the strong, dedicated performances. There's nothing particularly wrong with Begins, but in a way, that's exactly what's wrong with it. Even discounting the hundreds of comic books, Batman's stories have been told numerous times just in the last 15 years or so, including four live-action films, three animated TV series and a number of animated features, both theatrical and straight to video. Nolan's effort, while technically proficient and well-constructed, doesn't do anything unexpected. It caters to fans who didn't like Burton inserting his own stylistic vision into his film, and thus ends up seeming strangely timid.
Nolan, who directed the brilliant Memento and the moody thriller Insomnia, can do psychological drama well, but Begins is not good psychological drama. At times, it's good action, and its pseudo-profound insights into fear and redemption come off better than expected, thanks to delivery from the talented cast. The one area in which the film is an unqualified success—the freakish, frightening hallucinations induced by the Scarecrow—is not enough to save it from being a redundant addition to the bulging canon of Batman stories.