Since his first appearance in 1939, ‘The Bat-Man’, masked vigilante over the streets of Gotham City, has proved to be an enduring favourite of the comic book superheroes, due to his darkness, his mortality and, most importantly of all, the adaptability of his myth to changing times. On the big screen he has fared less well – ‘Batman 1966′, the feature-length outing for Adam West and Burt Ward’s corny television series, is to my mind one of the funniest films ever made, but its high camp high-jinks hardly do justice to DC Comics’ brooding original. Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) certainly nailed the legend’s noirish, gothic look, but was less assured in its handling of tone – and a rash of sequels brought the predictable diminishing returns. Now, however, Christopher (‘Memento’) Nolan’s ‘Batman Begins’ wipes the slate clean, taking viewers right back (again) to the caped crusader’s origins – and in this far more earnest adventure, the bat has well and truly abandoned camp and headed into more epic territories.
Haunted by anger and guilt after witnessing his parents gunned down in cold blood, and frustrated in his desire to kill the man who did it, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has turned his back on Gotham City and his father’s legacy. Traveling incognito amidst the world’s thieves and murderers in an attempt to understand the criminal mind, Wayne ends up in Bhutan, where he is recruited and trained in fighting and stealth techniques by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) on behalf of Ra’s al Ghul, leader of the secretive ‘League of Shadows’. Rejecting the group’s merciless brand of vigilantism, Wayne returns to Gotham, where the judiciary and constabulary are corrupt, and crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) now operates with impunity. Determined to put his new skills to good use, Wayne becomes the masked crimefighter Batman. Aided directly by his trusted family butler Alfred (Michael Caine), and less directly by the head of Wayne Enterprises’ Applied Sciences division, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), by old childhood friend turned Assistant DA Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), and by honest cop Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), Wayne soon uncovers a far more catastrophic threat to the city than Falcone and his thugs. In a plot involving Arkham Asylum’s chief psychiatrist Dr Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), his mysterious backers and a panic-inducing hallucinogen, Gotham is about to be visited by some very rough justice.
Fans of the Dark Knight’s on-screen iconography will not be disappointed by this new film, which traces Batman’s customised suit, car, utility belt, weapons and secret cave right back to their very beginnings, while giving them a more functional, and dare I say more rationalised, feel. While still at heart a dark fantasy, this adventure is more grittily realistic than Batman’s previous outings, with stunts and effects that are mostly physical rather than computer generated. The fights are close and hard, although in perhaps the most visually striking sequence Batman is reduced to a black blur in the midst of a crowd of toppling criminals. The ever excellent Christian Bale manages to make Wayne seem a real, complex individual, while giving Batman a formidable physical presence – the very opposite of Bale’s previous, skeletal performance in The Machinist. He is well supported by an excellent (and stellar) cast most notably Michael Caine seemingly born to be Alfred, Gary Oldman for once getting to play the nice guy, Cillian Murphy creepily nerdy, and Liam Neeson bringing a clever twist to his previous ‘guru knight’ rôles in The Phantom Menace and Kingdom of Heaven.