Batman Begins
Seen Wednesday, June 15 At Loews Boston Common #2
* * * 3/4

DC ties the score.

The comic book movie is a strange creature. Most of them get unfairly transformed into action movies (see Blade. See Blade hit things. See Blade put on sunglasses, and hit things harder) because that's the easiest mainstream genre to immediately apply to a comic title. Only twice before have I sat in a movie and felt like I was watching something that came from a comic book - most recently was Sin City, which could be argued was barely a movie since it was nearly panel to frame from Frank Miller's graphic novel. The first time, it was Spider-Man 2, where Sam Raimi not only captured the feel of the action scenes, but also nailed all those little things that happen in between, the parts where Peter Parker is the star of the show, not Spider-Man. It was balanced almost perfectly. While it doesn't quite reach the balance of the webslinger's second installment, Batman Begins succeeds in separating the hero from the man behind the mask, and allowing each to exist in their own right.

Strangely, this almost shifts the other way - this is more a movie about Bruce Wayne than it is about Batman. That's an important distinction, because in the Batman movies of the past, Wayne has been treated like a supporting character, and an aggravating-albeit-necessary one at that. Christopher Nolan, David Goyer and Christian Bale recognized that Batman isn't a superhero in the regular sense of the word - he has no "powers," per se. He's not an alien, he hasn't been exposed to lots of radiation, he hasn't been bitten by something that has, and he's not the next step in human evolution. He's just Bruce Wayne, who was born into a certain amount of privilege, and at a young age had the walls fall down around him and shatter his world. Bruce being a normal (rich, yes, but still normal) guy presents an opportunity that none of the other Batmovies explored - you can competently explain how he got this way. The other situations are convenient, science-fiction write-offs that waive the need for an origin. Things were this way, and now, thanks to this incredibly cool but realistically improbable event, things are that way. Events in Bruce's life are real and unexaggerated, and the team finally fills in the gaps.

Almost everything gets answered: How he learned to fight. Where the Batsuit came from, both theoretically and practically. Where the Batcave came from. Why a bat. And, most importantly, his motivation for doing any of this. The film goes step by step through the origin of Batman, and how Bruce changes when he puts on that suit and mask. One of the other fun things is that at every turn, they consider the consequences. Previous Batman movies had Bruce out all night saving Gotham from the terrors of the world, and then out the next night in a tux, rested and energetic and charming. Bale's version of Bruce Wayne is passed out until 3 PM the day after his first foray as Batman, and he's got the bruises and sore muscles to show for his actions.

I could run the comparison directly, pitting Christian Bale against Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney, but there's not much point. This is a very different person Bale is playing than the playboy-with-a-secret the others all played. He quickly and easily turned away from the previous examples, and made the part entirely his own. He's backed up by an astounding supporting cast. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are particularly outstanding, playing loyal Wayne employees, but Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Cilian Murphy and Tom Wilkinson don't waste any moment they are on screen either. The other high-profile cast member, Katie Holmes as Wayne's childhood sweetheart (we're talking 10 or 11 year old sweethearts, here), is more or less inconsequential and easily forgotten. Rachel Dawes is nothing special, and is used as a device to get Batman on the scene more than any significant entanglement in Bruce's life.

The only disappointment here, surprising for a big-budget comic book movie, is the action. Watching Bruce train for the League of Shadows, the group that teaches him all his moves and methods, is fantastic, because it's more about how he approaches it, less about the punches and kicks he's throwing. Once Batman has to throw down and fight, Nolan succumbs to the typical frenetic, disjointed action sequences that plague Hollywood right about now. I couldn't actually tell who he was swinging at half the time. There's also a car chase sequence that seems so out of place (and much too long) that even the writers poke fun at the absurdity of it (Alfred: "If this is supposed to be covert, sir, then what do you call that?" He indicates a TV recapping the previous night's car chase between the Tumbler and the police. Wayne "Good TV.") That's all it is. It'sa crowd pleaser for a crowd that's already happy. It doesn't need to be there, and it doesn't help much of anything.

But if that's my only complaint, it's a small price to pay. The action takes up so small a section of the movie that the disappointment is a minor one. Fighting is a distraction from what's going on in Wayne's internal world anyway, so the forgettable action is also forgivable. This is an amazing character reimagining that I can only hope Warner Brothers has the balls to stick with. Should a franchise spawn, it needs to avoid becoming the abonination of the late '90s. So long as the current team stays involved, I don't think that'll be a problem. They redeemed this character and this story, and I would love to see what else they could do with it.