BATMAN BEGINS (2005)

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My Reviews:	38 Total

Superhero movies as of late are hit and miss after mega hits like Spider-Man and X-Men you get all the super heroes starring in their own films. Some turn out great (The Punisher, Daredevil, and most recently Iron Man) and some out to be absolutley terrible (Fantastic Four, Catwoman, Man-Thing)but one thing is certain a comic book movie is destined to spawn cash or sequels. After an eight year hiatus following the terribly cheesy Batman and Robin the dark knight returns in an origin focused story of Bruce Wayne's rise to destiny and damn it was worth the eight year wait. Many refer to Spider-Man 2 as the best superhero film of all time however latley Iron Man has stolen it's thunder but my vote goes hands down to this film which is pretty much perfect. I'm sure if you picked and pryed you could find flaws but no flaws appear on the surface of the film everything just clicks together.

The cast is first of all of epic proportion and my number one favourite actor Christian Bale gives an amazing performance as Bruce Wayne and as Batman sounding harsh and menacing while in costume while being witty and sarcastic as Bruce Wayne. Liam Neeson is great as usual in his role as Rah's Al Ghul he actually makes you believe he's a caring mentor you trust the character as a good guy but towards the end you see his true colurs and it's amazing how Neeson plays both sides of this character. While many didn't like Katie Holmes i thought her performance was great she hit her character perfectly the sweet, innocent girl with good intentions although she is always in this role i thought she was suitable to the character. The supporting cast is great aswell Michael Caine is a lovable Alfred witty, yet caring at the same time, Ken Watanabe as a decoy is creepy and surrealistic he gives a wildly enjoyable performance, and while their screen time is small Tom Wilkonson,Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Rutgar Hauer give good performances and provide small characters with depth even though we all know Commissioner Gordon will be a big character in the future. Cillian Murphy nails his Scarecrow role perfectly aswell giving us a real lurking kind of creep in the kind of way that Ben Foster weirds you out in 30 Days Of Night with a totally psychotic but calm way.

In terms of direction Christopher Nolan who is yet to make a film that isn't amazing does another great job ressurrecting a dead franchises and finally giving it the righht tone and atmosphere. Who better than the man responsible for Memento and The Prestige to reinvent the worlds favourite caped crusader in a darker more character driven way. My only gripe is the choreography Nolan decided to go with for action and while i understand he was going for what he did i wasn't a fan of the choppy flashes when Batman fought villains. The script is solid and unlike any of the other films is free of one liners, and actually has characters that feel real not like cartoon characters. Visually the film has a very epic feel but stays dark in tone using almost always night settings and shadowy areas to help make Batman seem more fearsome and menacing which i felt matched the atmosphere of the film perfectly. The score is great very differant from any Bat-film a lot like the stuff you here from my personal favourite composer Steve Jablonsky (The Island, Transformers) who actually wasastudent of composer Hanz Zimmer who does the powerfully epic scores for this magnificant film. The special effects are great too very practical no unnesssecary CGI like many marvel movies in fact the Cg isn't noticable at all i can't even recall a scene that uses CG.

The Dark Knight hits theatres July 2008 with the same great director and with most of the epic cast from this film plus fresh faces like Heath Ledger (R.I.P), Aaron Eckhart,and Maggie Gyllenhaal. With all this plus the promise of more action, better performances, and electrifying scenes with familiar villains we all love my only question is how do you top perfection??We will soon find out.

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