Past Entertainment Articles.

Article for the week of 7/26/05

Really Pathetic Movie Review.

Batman Begins

By, Cozmic

The dark knight returns! That's right, we've got a new Batman movie to worry about. Is it good? Is it horrible? Have they found something even scarier than Jim Carrey in green spandex? Which annoying sidekick have the added this time?
Relax, as the title implies, it's Batman begins, meaning it's the beginning of it all. Yes, this means no silly sidekicks and no silly villains either. Batman Begins is darker than the last two Batman movies. (Quite a bit, too.) This is great!
Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a man with a need for vengeance. To this end, he's broken all ties with his life in Gotham and now walks around getting into fights with criminals, having no purpose other than to beat them up. During a fight with six crminals, Bruce gets arrested and thrown into jail. This is where he meets a man named Ducard (Liam Neeson), who tells him he could be much more than what he is now. He tells him he could have his revenge.
Okay, I'm just going to flat out say it before you all start thinking it. This is going to be one-sided. I like this movie. I like it alot.
Christian Bale fits perfectly as Batman. He's dark, classy and cool. He pulls off being a snobby aristocrat perfect. At the same time, there's no doubt Bruce bears the scars of his parents death. In fact, Bale's definitely the best Batman on screen yet.
The rest of the cast are a bunch of celebrities, but not people who are popular due to being in some teenage magazine, but because they are good actors. Michael Caine is great as Alfred, and Alfred in general is depicted very well. Instead of just being a butler, he's portrayed as Bruce's guardian, his actual family. Then we have Morgan Freeman as Lucuis Fox, Bruce's ”supplier”, a highly charismatic character that fits Freeman perfectly.
Batman's ”sidekick” in the movie is a cop called Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), a person who's more of a way into the police than an actual sidekick. Gary Oldman always does his parts well, although in Batman Begins he gets to play a good guy. A good guy with connections to possibly the scariest guy in all of Gotham (Yes, Batman isn't a nice person who runs around dancing to disco music, Batman's fear itself). Yes, Jim Gordon is great as well.
About the only one who feels a bit off in this movie is Katie Holems, who plays Bruce's childhood friend Rachel Dawes. It's not that her acting is bad, it's actually quite good. She feels like a teenage girl who ran away from Dawson's Creek. But, you can't blame her for thinsg she did in the past. If she didn't have that label, she'd fit right in.
And while we're nitpicking, the Batmobile looks very, very different. It's not long and flat, it's more along the lines of an armored fighting vehicle. But it fits in with the more realistic feel of the movie, and also looks really cool once you've gotten used to it.
All in all, Christopher Nolan might have made the best Batman movie yet, and if not, it's without a doubt in the top three. I'd definitely recommend seeing this one if you like Batman, because this is the way Batman is supposed to be. The dark knight has returned and he's darker than ever.