Batman Begins (2005) is a star-studded action-drama thriller starring Christian Bale (of Equilibrium, 2002) as Bruce Wayne and Batman. In Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne’s growth from childhood into adulthood, we see how he became the Batman, who he formed his initial friendships & alliances with, who he became early enemies with, and we follow his first few missions as the Batman.
Also starring Liam Neeson as the Ninja clan leader who helped train Batman near the start of the movie, while harbouring a dark intentions that come back into the plot towards the end of the movie.
Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play the roles of Batman’s senior helpers – Alfred the butler, and Mr Fox the technologist who was a former board member and friend of Bruce Wayne’s late father.
Gary Oldman plays the detective who Batman forms an early alliance with, and Katie Holmes (ex-wife of Tom Cruise) plays the lead female who Bruce Wayne grew up with and Batman rescues.
Tom Wilkinson plays the main bad guy early on, and Cillian Murphy plays the main baddie in the middle of the movie.
Generally, it’s a great cast with great acting ability expressed throughout the movie. Batman’s car and technological gadgets are also very nice.
But it’s disappointing that we get some annoyingly hard-to-see fight scenes where everything’s dark and the camera keeps switching between pieces of unclear footage – this is not the kind of action scene I enjoy to watch, but I appreciate there’s no real martial arts skill to be demonstrated by any of these guys and this is a way to cover it up and make it still look credible for drama lovers and suspense or even horror genre fans. Indeed, this movie gets a bit boring with a lot of drama genre creeping in, but when the plot gains legs and the action picks up it becomes very entertaining from time to time.
There’s a great plot twist about half an hour before the end of the movie, when Liam Neeson’s character comes to Gotham.
All in all, I rate it pretty good for fans of this kind of mixed action-drama genre; but for pure action hero movie awesomeness, I rate this movie just ‘OK’ on a par with golden oldie action dramas like Lethal Weapon that have minimal special effects and gadgets etc.
Sequels
If you loved this movie, you might also love its immediate sequel The Dark Knight (2008) which brings back most of the same major cast members and gets regularly called a masterpiece by movie critics, although it doesn’t work so well for me – the star of that movie is actually the Joker rather than the Batman. Maybe it’s good for drama and horror movie fans, but it’s not so pleasant for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs to enjoy. But if you do enjoy the sequel, you’ll be pleased to know most of the same guys come back again for a threequel, The Dark Knight Rises (2012).