Review: Batman Begins

OK, I am a big soft kid and I like my 'no-brainer' action flicks.

But then sometimes, you drop on a film that falls somewhere between the cerebral and the senseless.

That's sort of where Batman Begins lies.

Having 'a mind like fly paper', Sherlock Holmes from the 1970 film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, all manner of trivia sticks in my head with all 'the tedious inevitability of an unloved season', Hugo Drax from the 1979 James Bond film, Moonraker .. by way of an example, or two.

So there you go.

So when we see Bruce Waynes' parents gunned down in a seedy alleyway, I immediately recall that in the Tim Burton original Batman, his parents are killed by non other than the young Jack Napier, later to be known as The Joker.

Needless to say, the guy who kills his parents isn't a younger iteration of The Joker, so my mind is knocked askew and I have to then make room in my head for an altered course of Gotham folklore & history whereby things are slightly different.

Not being the comic nerd of that particular character, I've no idea which is right or wrong. Either way, a little consistency would go a long way.

What can I say of the cast? probably very little that doesn't make use of superlatives and gushing praise.

What with Liam Neeson (Henri Ducard), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne), Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon), Rutger Hauer, Tom Wilkinson .. pause for breath...

While non of them would find themselves overly taxed by either the dialogue or the depth of the plot or any nuanced performance, all made worthy and credited performances, as you would expect.

The overall feel of the film was one of epic proportions, with a little 'e'.

I took my nephew along to see the film and I found myself having to explain some of the plot devices and sequences to him, so I found the classification quite misleading. Surely a 15 rating would have been more appropriate that a 12A?

And with that suitably subtle segue, to the plot we go.

A young Bruce Wayne is left troubled by a subterranean encounter with some bats living in a well on the grounds of Wayne Manor, leaving his suitably vacuous young mind quite troubled.

A trip to the opera triggers a flashback which leads the Wayne clan to decamp from the opera and make an early exit; presumably stage left.

On doing so, his parents are bumped off by an otherwise unknown and worthless, nameless criminal. This sets the stage for the young Bruce to question his goals in life and set a new course; one of vengeance.

Only, things aren't quite as simple as they first seem and thoughts of revenge turn to acts of self-preservation as he realizes that there is much, much more to the untimely death of his parents when he meets the man he believes to be responsible for their deaths; Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson).

At this point, Bruce disappears into the wider world and isn't to be seen for seven years .. seven years in Tibet, no less.

While lost in some Stalin-esque Asian penal colony, he is discovered by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) who offers him a chance to follow a different path and to train him accordingly.

And here is where Batman really does begin.

As usual, I won't go into further detail, since there's always a chance of burping out a spoiler or two and I find that when I read the interpretation of one person, I go into a film with one idea and come out with another, typically very uncomplimentary of the first.

In this period of refinement where Henri Ducard hones the young Bruce, it seems that Liam Neeson brought with him some of the couched and cliched dialogue from the various Star Wars prequel films, which would no doubt make George Lucas et al proud, whereas I found most of which to be lumbering and florid.

The shear level of detail is something to behold. The scale of Gotham is akin to that of Mega City One from 2000AD, sumptuous in the seething, thrusting squalid majesty of the buildings and improbable monorail systems slicing across the city from road level to sky high.

On encountering our first 'baddie', The Scarecrow, we are indeed treated to a truly horrific vision of drug-induced hallucinatory fear and paranoia.

Not having taken drugs, I cannot speak from personal experience, but of those that I have spoken to who have, the visual effects people really did do their homework and created a very real, disturbing and shocking image of madness.

Even if I might not like a film for one thing, I might sometimes like the film for something else, so detail is something I prize quite highly. If the final article doesn't float my boat, I might doff my cap in the direction of detail and the thought poured into the production.

Having been furnished with a knowledge of the past and the beginning of The Dark Knight, there is a better sense of the things that motivate him, of which we were given only cursory glimpses of in the various previous films.

There has been a little criticism of the fight sequences, and I would also be critical, but not for the same reasons. I found many of the physical engagements to be too claustrophobic and cluttered, not giving a sense of who was dishing out what to who and when.

All in all, a very dark, sinister and entertaining if slightly circuitous and long film...