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BATMAN BEGINS Three movies later, after "Batman Returns," "Batman Forever" and "Batman and Robin" drove Burton's visually stunning and intelligent original film into the ground, most fans rightly assumed that the final cinematic nail had been drilled into the Dark Knight's coffin. Enter Christopher Nolan. The lauded director, who had a disappointing sophomore effort with "Insomnia" (his follow-up to his first studio effort, the brilliant "Memento"), takes on Batman with stunning results. Tackling the origins of the character, and pulling ever so loosely from Frank Miller's celebrated graphic novel on the subject, "Batman: Year One," Nolan delivers an invigorating summer blockbuster that dazzles, surprises and, most importantly, brings a new angle, and new life, to an old story. Focusing on the creation of Batman, and Bruce Wayne's transformation from orphaned heir to his family's fortune into a winged creature who lurks the night fighting crime, "Batman Begins" touches more deeply ideas Burton only touched on in "Batman," namely the cross someone who lives a double life must bear. As a younger, hotter, more chiseled version of Bruce Wayne, Christian Bale is perfect as the fortunate son of Gotham who decides he must single-handedly save the city from being consumed by corruption. Gotham, which is a teeming, slightly futuristic, slightly dated revision of Manhattan (though, to be fair, Nolan's set could replicate almost any urban center), has become a place nearly as bad as the noir hell audiences recently saw in "Sin City." Like that lawless, cartoonish town, where the politicians and cops were even more crooked than the criminals, Nolan's Gotham is a place where everyone is collecting a payoff. After watching his parents gunned down by a desperate denizen of his not-so-fair town, Wayne leaves a cushy life at Princeton to seemingly wander the Eastern hemisphere. When the film catches up with him, Wayne is fighting off assailants in a Mongolian prison. Then, after a run-in with a mysterious Westerner (played by Liam Neeson), Wayne escapes into the mountains where he trains with a pack of vigilante fighters known as the League of Shadows, and run by a figure named Ra's Al-Ghul. Training in extreme hand-to-hand combat, which seemingly combines multiple Eastern fighting techniques with various touches of showmanship, Wayne learns (after multiple beatings) how to harness his most powerful weapon: fear. Once Wayne returns to Gotham Batman as we know him is born. Aided by his amiable butler, Alfred, wonderfully played by Michael Caine - the first actor who put a dynamic, lively face on the character - the film unfolds in ways one never thought imaginable.
In darker fashion,
Nolan delivers a tale that does what "Spider-Man" did: Deliver the
origins of a beloved superhero that is ultimately more human than
superhuman. Thankfully Nolan manages to delight in the fantastic in
"Batman Begins," while keeping the story very much grounded in reality
for a film, which is finally as entertaining as it is stimulating.
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