BATMAN BEGINS - DVD review

"It's not who you are underneath; it's what you do that defines you." --"Batman Begins"

The "Batman" comics were already popular when I was a kid in the 1950s, and at the time I had hoped there would be something better on the big screen than the corny 1943 serial, "The Batman," of which I had seen a chapter or two. I was doubly frustrated in the 1960's when the Adam West television series only seemed to ridicule the Caped Crusader.

So it was that I found myself among the many people standing in line on the opening day of Tim Burton's "Batman" in 1989. It had been a long wait, but it was worth it. Burton's "Batman" became one of my favorite superhero movies. Yet with each successive "Batman" film I saw the franchise fall further and further into the campy style of the old TV show. I tried to watch movies three and four several times on cable, but I could never get through them.

Now we have 2005's "Batman Begins," cowritten and directed by Christopher Nolan, and I'm happy all over again. I found the movie spellbinding, easily among my favorite films of the year. While it doesn't conjure up quite the mystique of Burton's first issue, it has, like the Burton film, abandoned the look of an old comic book for the darker, more realistic aspect of a graphic novel. I'm glad Nolan resolved to go back to square one and take everything seriously for a change, loading his cast with fine, serious actors like Michael Caine, who steals the show, and Morgan Freeman, a close second. Then, too, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, and Katie Holmes portray characters who are also plausible and well drawn. And Christian Bale is the first actor in the title role who actually fits my mental image of Batman. In Nolan's hands, this is no mere comic-book character; this is a Knight Noir.

"Batman Begins" is a rethinking of the cinematic "Batman" saga, and as the title suggests, it starts by going back to the beginnings of the "Batman" legend as suggested by the early comics. The first half of the movie, and the best part in my opinion, recounts the origins of Batman: How an angry, disillusioned young billionaire, Gotham City's Bruce Wayne, travels the ends of the Earth to study the criminal mind and grapple with his own fears, forever seeking a means to fight the injustice he sees around him.

Eventually, on the edge of nowhere, he finds the counsel he's looking for in the League of Shadows, a centuries' old secret society bent on checking world corruption. Here, he learns to look inward, face himself, and draw on his inner as well as outer strength. Besides learning new martial-arts skills, Bruce learns several other things: He discovers that theatricality and deception are powerful weapons and that "You always fear what you don't understand," notions that would presage his eventual donning of cape and mask to become the melodramatic Dark Knight.

The film takes great pains to present every detail of its plot and characters as things that might actually happen, no matter how preposterous. There is no radioactive bat biting Bruce Wayne and turning him into an instant superhero with supernatural powers. Wayne is an ordinary human being with extraordinary sensibilities, a strong physical makeup, access to high-tech gadgetry, and a ton of money. What he decides to become as "Batman" seems entirely within the realm of possibility (if not probability). Even the Batmobile, the Tumbler, is a believable real-life incarnation of the hackneyed comic-book creation.

Then, the second half of the film takes us closer to comic-book territory with a far-fetched plot involving madmen attempting to destroy the "decadent" Gotham City by pouring hallucinogenic drugs into the city's water supply and using a microwave emitter to vaporize it and cause panic in the streets. "If you'll excuse me, I have a city to destroy." While it's all very silly and tends to diminish somewhat the more realistic doings that preceded it, I had no strenuous objections to anything that happened. Comic-book plots are comic-book plots, no matter how earnestly they're presented, and one has to accept such conventions if one is to appreciate any work in the genre.

Everybody in the film, heroes and villains alike, are more true-to-life than in previous "Batman" movies and come close to being almost believable in Nolan's vision. Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne may not exhibit the haunted complexities of Michael Keaton's Batman, but we are able to see in Bale's characterization a strong moral courage and a determination to do good. "What chance does Gotham have when the good people do nothing?" asks his friend Rachel (Katie Holmes). He resolves to be one of those "good people" who will stand up and fight.

Nevertheless, as sympathetic as Bale is in the role, Nolan hedges his bets by surrounding the actor with a supporting cast to die for, peripheral characters who despite their number are well woven into the fabric of the plot and never detract from the movie's focus on Bruce Wayne/Batman. Michael Caine as the surrogate father figure, Alfred the butler, for example, is good enough to get his own show. I've always thought there were three actors in Hollywood who consistently transcended their material, routinely putting in great performances even when their scripts were against them, and in this movie (which does not work against them in any case) we get two of these folks: Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. (I missed only Gene Hackman among this magic three.) Freeman plays Lucius Fox, an old friend of Bruce's father whom Bruce comes to trust; and whom we come to trust just as much as Bruce does.

Liam Neeson plays Henri Ducard, a strong, tough, wise, but vaguely sinister mentor, a role Neeson seems consigned to play forever unless he puts a stop to it. Well, OK, he does it so well, one can't blame him, but really--"Star Wars," "Kingdom of Heaven," and now "Batman Begins"? Next up, it's gratifying to see Gary Oldman portraying a good guy for a change as Sgt. Gordon; and Oldman has played so many Americans in films it's hard to remember that he's British. Cillian Murphy is perfectly cast as the slimy Dr. Crane, alias "the Scarecrow"; but make no mistake, the villains are not any more superhuman than Batman is. The Scarecrow works his mischief with a crude burlap mask and a powerful hallucinogen. Then, there's Tom Wilkinson as a ruthless crime boss, Rutger Hauer as a scheming business partner, and Ken Watanabe as a shadowy cult figure, all equally up to the task. Even Katie Holmes as Bruce Wayne's romantic interest (the romance admittedly taking a backseat to the rest of the story) is fine, although she appears a little young to be the Assistant District Attorney of a big city.

In a nod to "Batman Begins" fitting into the world of the earlier films as well as the comic books (several minor but notable inconsistencies aside), I liked the way Nolan ends his tale with a signal of things to come in subsequent installments. Without giving too much away, we're told about the construction of a new Batcave. Sgt. Gordon becomes Lt. Gordon, suggesting a Commissioner Gordon in the near future. And, most important, the escape of a whole passel of inmates from the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane foreshadows the various loonies dressing up in costume to commit their evildoings, one in particular who at the scene of his crimes leaves his calling card, a Joker.

OK, did I have any misgivings about this new venture? Of course, but I didn't find them severe enough to spoil my enthusiasm for the movie. First, I found director Nolan's fondness for close-ups and quick edits a bit off-putting, not only in the fight scenes but throughout the picture. Nolan probably uses so many of these devices because he believes they involve the audience more in the action and, just as likely, because he believes they're expected of him. As far as I can tell, this was Nolan's first outright adventure film, and while he does a superb job moving the action forward, it is clear he's feeling his way along like anybody else.

Next, there's James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer's new score that tries hard to recall Danny Elfman's original music without literally duplicating it. But the new score succeeds mainly in sounding louder and less inspired than before, reminding one again how unique Elfman's music was. However, I won't complain too much since the new score does have an epic, heroic quality that grows on a person, especially as the film wears on.

Then there's the matter of the villains, something I mentioned earlier is primarily a plus. What I didn't mention is the lesser problem that "Batman Begins" offers us a layering of villains throughout rather than a single dominant force. Although I can understand how the surprise factor in using multiple evildoers can keep audiences on an expectant edge, it also tends to water down our fear of any one scoundrel, particularly when we don't know who is at the top of the hierarchy.

My final concern is the most minor of all and perhaps only important to me alone. Namely, there is an episode in "Batman Begins" involving young Bruce Wayne's parents that is markedly different from the one viewers might remember from Tim Burton's "Batman." The new version is actually closer to a scene originally described in the comic book, with Burton having taken some poetic license with it; but despite its being more accurate, I wonder how many people besides myself were thrown off by it? Certainly, the new film is meant to be a break from the Burton films and its successors, yet it also attempts to be consistent in other respects to the comics and to the previous movies. I can't believe a filmmaker would intentionally want an audience to wonder, "But I thought such and such was supposed to have happened?" when the audience should be following the film's own story line. I simply found the incident a distraction that might have been avoided. Oh, well, a quibble of little consequence.

Still and all, these are minor carps in a film that succeeded in keeping my attention from beginning to end. I've seen it three times now--in a regular theater, in an IMAX theater, and on DVD--and I look forward to watching it again.

Video:
There's almost nothing to fault in the video reproduction. Warner Bros. engineers give the movie an entire disc side to itself, with almost no extras, freeing up space for an anamorphic widescreen transfer at a high bit rate. The screen size measures a ratio of 2.40:1. Colors are radiant when they need to be and rich in texture; definition is impressive; and even with the movie's dark tone, detail is exceptionally good and grain quite low. My only cavil might be a touch of glassiness here and there, especially in brightly lit scenes, but it's nothing, actually.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is excelent. Sure, one would expect big dynamic contrasts and a robust deep bass in a film like this; but "Batman Begins" has dynamics and bass that produce more gut-thumping results than practically any movie short of the new "Star Wars" trilogy. Add in some terrific directional simulations from the surround speakers, all the while maintaining a clear midrange for dialogue, and you get a terrific aural experience.

Extras:
Disc one of this "Two-Disc Deluxe Edition" contains the feature presentation; English and French spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; a generous forty scene selections (but no chapter insert); some DVD-ROM links; an opening promo for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"; and a widescreen theatrical trailer for "Batman Begins." Surprisingly, there is no audio commentary, possibly to conserve more space for the movie itself, but there is a cute, five-minute parody of the film, MTV's "Tankman Begins," that integrates scenes from the movie with added shots of Jimmy Fallon and a surprise guest.

Naturally, we find most of the bonus materials on disc two, but it is here that the Warner Bros. DVD production team get too clever for their own good. I can't remember when I had a harder time navigating through a set of extras. Instead of a straightforward table of contents up front, the Warner brain trust give us an interactive comic book called "Inner Demons," where we're expected to explore the special features from page to page. We have to click around on each new page of the comic book to find the various bonus items. At the very end, there is a conventional list of contents, but maybe I'm just too dense, I couldn't get to it from the outset of the disc. I hope one of our astute readers will write in and explain to me how to access the directory more quickly than having to fumble through page after page until the finish.

Anyway, among the supplemental materials, you'll first find "Batman: The Journey Begins." This is a fourteen-minute documentary on the development and casting of the film. It's typical of such behind-the-scenes docs, with comments from the director and filmmakers, plus excerpts from the movie. Next, there are featurettes lasting three-to-fifteen minutes each that include "Cape and Cowl"; "Visual Effects"; "The Tumbler" (the Batmobile); "Gotham Rises" (the city, the Batcave, Wayne Manor, etc.); "Saving Gotham City" (the development of miniatures, CGI, and effects for the monorail chase scene); and "Genesis of the Bat" (the Dark Knight's history and other influences on the film). In addition, there are three art galleries of posters for the movie, and "Confidential Files" listing and explaining "Hardware," "Enemies," and "Allies and Mentors" in the story. You can find most of these latter files in bits and pieces along the way, too, but when I accessed them that way rather than all at once at the end, I found myself back at the beginning of the interactive comic book having to start over again to reach the point where I'd left off. This "interactive" business is supposed to be fun, but as you can tell, I found it a tedious ordeal.

The two discs are housed in a slim-line keep case, further enclosed in a cardboard slipcover. The slipcover also contains a 72-page comic book featuring the first "Batman" story--"The Bat-Man" by Bob Kane ("Detective Comics" No. 27, May, 1939)--and two other tales that inspired the movie--"The Man Who Falls" and a chapter of "The Long Halloween." Furthermore, within the keep case you'll find several advertising supplements for "Batman" collectibles and such, but, as I say, no chapter listings anywhere. How hard would it have been to print the scene selections on the same paper as the printed ads?

Parting Thoughts:
Is "Batman Begins" the best film of the year or one of the greatest movies ever made? I have no idea. But is it entertaining? You bet. There hasn't been another film in years I liked well enough to watch three times within a period of a few months except this one. I found the movie creative, energetic, imaginative, involving, and even a little inspiring. Its edgy tone and dark atmosphere coupled with its comic-book theatrics make it a winning combination for older children and adults alike. This may be a hard act to follow.