Batman Begins

Batman Begins is one of those rare movies that transcend the line between superhero movies and real cinema. Superhero movies have been generally scoffed at by critics who dismiss them as designed to thrill and lacking in substance. But, Nolan's Batman trilogy bucks the trend in the most refreshing of manners possible. It gives us a look at a man who goes through travails like ours before becoming our saviour.

After 1997's abject failure of 'Batman and Robin' , a movie i would strongly advise to stay away from, Christopher Nolan was chosen by Warner Bros to helm the reboot of the series. As Nolan's previous movies such as 'Memento' and 'Insomnia' had shown, he was far more comfortable working on a darker project. Batman Begins succeeds because of the inherent substance present.

The film starts from a prison camp in some godforsaken place, showing Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) taking some serious torture simply to understand Evil for what it is. He is saved by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), who turns out to be a shadow warrior of some sort and teaches Bale everything from sword fighting to the powers of the mind. As he becomes a physical force, he is invited to join the 'League Of Shadows' an all powerful ancient group that destroys cities that it believes are beyond repair. However, when he is asked to kill someone to gain membership, he cannot as he remembers how his parents were brutally killed while he watched on a little child.

He somehow returns to Gotham and becomes a caped crime fighter with the help of Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who provides him with some very high tech crime fighting equipment. His childhood experience of being abandoned in a well and facing hordes of bats, makes him adopt the bat as an inspiration. To hide his identity, he begins to act in sync with his millionaire playboy persona on the advice of his butler Alfred (Michael Caine). All he achieves is managing to irritate his childhood companion, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) who along with Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) are trying to rid the city of crime and corruption.

Enter the psychiatrist, Dr John Crane (Cillian Murphy) who is terrifying as Scarecrow with his devious schemes and brilliantly engineered effects. As the Batman confronts the Scarecrow and also his earlier nemesis, there is plenty of action with Computer Generated Imagery kept to a minimum.

Nolan's triumph lies in how his characters are bound by forces just like us. Also, the sheer sophistication and stress on how cool the Batman is that was common to earlier movies has been neatly sidestepped thus creating a movie that we actually care about. The locales were brilliant and very much in sync with the tone of the movie and it's themes. There is hardly a better composer in Hollywood than Hans Zimmer and he simply does not disappoint us with a soundtrack that does resounding justice to a film rolling onward at breakneck speed

The cast is mindboggling with British stalwarts like Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Christian Bale ably supported by their American counterparts in Morgan Freeman and Katie Holmes and the Irishmen in Cillian Murphy and Liam Neeson. However, it is the darkness and sheer charisma of Nolan's direction which steals the show. Interestingly, this was around the period where the Bond Franchise was rebooted as well, with a more human titular character who is painfully aware of the consequences of his actions, much like the Batman. Universally acclaimed, this was a movie that resurrected the Batman on a scale closer to the Spider man movies of Sam Raimi. It was hard to pin down what caused me to regard it favourably but as I write this, I realise it was the human element. With motifs like constant fear and dark and scary nights, Nolan left his mark, much like the Batman on his crusades across Gotham.