Batman Begins

As an attempt to breathe new life into a franchise that had lost its way with Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, Batman Begins deserves an A+ for effort. Replacing camp fetish with gritty realism, director Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David Goyer have envisioned a dark, bitter and twisted knight. In posing questions about the sources and motives of criminality, the story also raises the ugly question of Batman's right to set himself up as a vigilante and take the law into his own hands, all of which is hugely interesting and surprisingly relevant for a superhero movie. Moreover, Christian Bale makes for an excellent Batman, conveying a convincing combination of anger, guilt and vulnerability. Fans of the Batman marque will very probably be relieved and entertained in equal measures, but despite all that, Batman Begins is not a very good film. While Nolan and Goyer have fashioned a bleak noir-ish meditation on guilt and redemption, they've had to shoehorn it into a more easily digestible package for the fans who demand the biff-bang-thwock stylings of the more conventional superhero blockbuster. Incisive commentaries on the nature of criminality are subsequently undermined by infantile pronunciations on good versus evil; dark insights into the human condition are burned up in hi-octane action sequences. It's tempting to believe that Nolan was trying to portray Batman's split personality by making Batman Begins something of a schizophrenic experience, but the more prosaic reality is that a potentially excellent film has been flawed by commercial concerns. A giant step forward, then, and two baby steps back.