While you won’t find any “Pow” or “Wham”
in bubble dialog in this film, it has plenty of action that
illustrates what you see on camera. Let me get my
only complaint out of the way…this “MTV” kind of choppy film cutting
with the action scenes drove me crazy! You never really see any detail
of the hand to hand combat. Quintin Tarantino should have been called
in on this one for some Kill Bill type of action sequences. With that
said, the story of Bruce Wayne and how all this Batman comic book
character started from childhood is one of the best told stories I’ve
seen in an action movie. Slow a bit at first, you soon find yourself
enthralled in the story before you.
Haunted by
childhood trauma (he fell down a well full of bats) and by the
suppression of guilt from his very wealthy parent’s deaths, Wayne (Bale)
returns to Gotham from the East where he has been training with ninja
Ras Al-Ghul (Watanabe) and Henri Ducard (Neeson). He comes back to a
city full of crime and corruption. His father practically built the
entire infrastructure of Gotham and Wayne is determined to clean it up
and seek vengeance as he creates the Batman indenity. His normal home,
the palatial family estate is run by Alfred Pennyworth (Caine), the
lifelong family butler. I have to say right here, it was tough seeing
one of my all-time screen favorites reduced to the part of a butler.
Make no mistake, he does it well…but, sigh…I’m used to Mr. Caine in a
much more glorified role…oh well. Back to the story…Wayne seeks help
from his family business…now being run by a man named Earle (Hauer) and
Earle isn’t pleased about the return of the heir to the company. (Wayne
was believed to have been killed in an accident) He does get help,
though from shunned employee Lucius Fox (Freeman) who has been cast away
to the research and development department of the Wayne company empire.
(You can’t help but to relate this relationship to the James Bond
story.)
The task is
large and the obstacles larger but Wayne is up to it and with the help
of the one good cop left, Lt. James Gordon (Oldman) and childhood friend
and current assistand DA Rachel Dawes (Holmes), he swoops down and takes
care of business. I must mention, the batmobile is almost comical in
that it’s more of a pumped up dune buggy. That, I thought was pretty
lame.
Since we
all know some of this story, I’m not giving away much, but this one is
much darker than previous Batman installments but is so well made, it’s
sure to be your favorite to date. I thoroughly enjoyed what I think
will be the best movie of the summer.
Four
cascarones is rare for me…what does that say? Go see it!!!
