Talk about "Batman Begins" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
"Batman Begins" is the story of the early life and times of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), and the events which led him to become Batman. When the film begins we quickly learn that Bruce is afraid of bats due to a traumatic childhood memory which continues to haunt him. His fear of bats is ultimately the beginning of a chain reaction which eventually leads to the transformation from Bruce Wayne to Batman. Inspired by his childhood friend Rachel (Katie Holmes), Bruce, as Batman, attempts to rid
Gotham of the crime and corruption it has come to know so well. Unfortunately, Gotham's villains never tire, and they're constantly multiplying, leaving Batman with quite a task ahead of him.
Review
Though the film jumped around between the past, the early past, and the present, it did not prove incredibly difficult to understand, though sometimes (especially during the college-age past) I forgot that things were taking place in a memory until it was over with. The leaps between childhood, early twenties, and age 30 were necessary to explain things, and that's when they took place. At the very last possible moment before the audience would be confused as to what the heck was going on without the memory, it was flashed back to, and a wave of understanding flowed into the theatre seats.
The first hour of the film was dull because it was setting up the dominos to knock over in the remainder of the film. There was a lot of Bruce-Wayne-history in the first hour, and though it explained his motivation to become Batman, and how he became so skilled, it was still not incredibly entertaining.
The second half of the film, from the point when he begins putting together the idea of Batman, is considerably more entertaining, though not as much as I would have hoped. The audience is not made to hate the villain, in-fact, he's slightly likable, which, though it puts us in the same place as Bruce, is not great on the entertainment scale.
The fight scenes were what really troubled me. The camera was used in such a way that you could tell that there was a fight going on, but you couldn't tell who was doing what parts of the fight, and you couldn't tell who won until you saw a shot of Batman standing triumphantly over his enemy. From the beginning, because it was filmed to make the audience feel like they were "in the fight", it was impossible to tell what was happening in the fight scenes. This film would have been much more enjoyable if it was possible to see what was going on half of the time.
Also, the car-chase scene that is required in order for the film to be a Batman movie, dragged on and on. Don't get me wrong, car chases can be quite entertaining, but after ten minutes of watching Batman drive around and avoid the police, attempting to thwart them the same way five or six different times, it gets old. The car-chase could have been considerably more exciting if there had been a multitude of different ways he attempted to escape, but the same trick was recycled until it eventually worked.
Conclusion
Though I complained about the first half, the second was considerably better. The materials and gadgets used to create Batman's suit were very interesting. Also, watching the Batcave grow from an abandoned well and underground cavern, into a complete hide-out was cool. As a whole, this movie was only half-decent, making it almost less than mediocre, but I'll be nice and give it half-stars. It gets 2.5 because it was kind-of lame, but it might be neat to watch if you were a Batman fanatic hiding out in your basement and you wanted to watch the entire series of Batman movies in consecutive order. This movie really leads right up to "Batman" with Michael Keaton, so watching them in order, and watching the movies get worse and worse might be pretty cool, though on the Batman scale, I'd say this flick falls between "Batman Returns" and "Batman & Robin."
