Deborah Lipp

Batman Begins (2005) 5/10
Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), billionaire son of Gotham, is traumatized by the death of his parents and a bunch of bats. Seeking to fight injustice, he learns to kick ass until he comes to the attention of the League of Shadows. He parts ways with them, though (and not very nicely) and decides to become Batman instead.

Batman Begins is not as bad as Hulk. Beyond that, it deserves very little praise. Both movies put notable directors at the helm of superb casts and magnificent design and create ponderous, self-important, dull affairs.

When I say that Batman Begins is slow, allow me to punctuate it. It is over an hour into the movie before Batman appears. That’s right, a full goddamn hour of scary bats, learning to fight, Seeking Inner Wisdom (puh-leez), acquiring a costume, locating a Bat Cave, a Batmobile, and a grappling hook. Good lord, there’s even a test drive of the Batmobile for several minutes. Because, y’know, test drives are the height of action-adventure.

Good superhero movies understand something fundamental: Movies aren’t comic books. No comic fan minds picking up an origin issue, reading it, and then buying the next issue. But to sit through an entire “origin issue” movie…! I want more. I want my movies to move. Because that’s how they got the clever name.

Now, there is lots of physical movement in Batman Begins. For all the portentious conversations in muted, gravelly tones, there are still a lot of fights, especially in the training sequences in the Unspecified East. But the filming is choppy and handheld, so it’s not like we get to actually see the fighting. Mostly we see the portentuous conversations.

Can we talk about the Unspecified East? There is something extremely discomfitting, edging into racism, about the way Asia is portrayed. It is the source of wisdom, of mastering the self, and of course, of learning to fight. Yet is a heartless place; only an American believes compassion has value. (For a killer screed against Asian stereotypes, including in Batman Begins, check out Reappropriate.)

If you want to make a dull movie, it’s essential to introduce a pseudo-romance with no heat but lots of moralizing lectures. Katie Holmes is perfect for that. She is a miscast nightmare, in a movie that mostly nails the casting. Not Katie’s fault so much that she’s ill-conceived and poorly written; the daughter of the maid who grows up to be assistant D.A., the tiny little girly girl who does nothing to make herself appear more mature (as any real lawyer who looks like that would). And by the way, only in fiction do childhood friends grow up to desire each other; the rest of us meet new people in high school.

When Batman finally gets to be Batman, the movie improves. He swoops admirably, and has the scary profile, creature-of-the-night, spook the crooks thing down. In fact, he may be the first on-screen Batman to really sell the notion that Batman is a creation meant to terrify criminals. Criminals indeed get scared, and you can see why.

Michael Caine as Alfred is a dream. Of course, every movie with Michael Caine is elevated by him, provided he isn’t doing an American accent. Here he is English, so yay. Morgan Freeman is also eternally wonderful, but I find him less successful here. His acting style is so dialed down and natural that in such a stylized atmosphere he sticks out. The effect is jarring.

Look, maybe the movies should just give up on Batman as a subject, and we the audience should pin our hopes on the next X-Men movie.