The Wily Filipino

Batman Really Begins.

(Image stolen from Beyazperde.)

Not much about Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins either: people have said it's the best of the Batman franchise -- followed almost always by "Which isn't saying much," although in this case it is. It's an excellent popcorn movie, and there's real visual pleasure to be had at the glorious mess of metal and fire and steam at the end (the Poeta kept calling that part "sexy," and I think I know what she means).

The bad thing about "origin" movies is that the audience knows what happens next; the good thing about it is the leisurely way by which Batman's persona and surrounding trappings -- the bats, the cave, the Batmobile -- is slowly revealed to the audience and Bruce Wayne himself. In this respect the farfetched plot, involving a water vaporizer that makes little logical sense, is mere window dressing; the real story is Wayne coming to grips with his own identity and past (kind of like Guy Pearce in Nolan's Memento).

Christian Bale isn't half bad -- he's certainly better than any of his predecessors, and he has a mean, inscrutable look to his face that fits the Dark Knight persona -- and he is surrounded by an impeccable cast, after all, with at least a couple of Oscars between them. (Except for Katie Holmes, who looks all of nineteen, as an assistant D.A.; the fact that Christian Bale looked, at certain angles, like Risky Business-era Tom Cruise did not help at all. I'm trying to restrain myself from reproducing the whole Tom - Rob - Scarlett - Jessica - Lindsay - Katie story here, but it's easy enough to Google.)

But the best of the cast was an almost unrecognizable, Bill Macy-ish Gary Oldman, as a (then) Sgt. Gordon, making Batman Begins my favorite Oldman movie since Peter Medak's Romeo Is Bleeding. (I was going to write that Oldman's rumpled, lived-in character nicely anchors the film in some sort of external reality, but Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman perform this function as well.) At least it's good to see Oldman not play the kind of sweaty psycho role that used to go to the far less talented Dennis Hopper.