Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32062 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-08-07
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 134 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Just when you though that the Batman franchise was dead and buried--certainly after the abomination that was 1997's Batman & Robin--along comes director Christopher Nolan to brilliantly bring it all back to life with the astonishingly strong Batman Begins.

Nolan, whose curriculum vitae already features Memento and Insomnia, focuses his attention where films in the franchise haven't gone before--by examining that character of Batman himself. Thus, the story here is the genesis of the character, from the death of Bruce Wayne's parents, harrowing training with the mysterious League of Shadows, right through to the Dark Knight's first appearances on the street of a crime-ridden, moody Gotham City.

Nolan plays several trump cards in his take on the Batman legacy, and none pay off quite so handsomely as his casting. Christian Bale is an immense force in the dual role of Bruce Wayne and Batman, bringing a brooding anger and genuine unease to the Batsuit. He's backed with strong turns from Tom Wilkinson, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, and Cillian Murphy as the unstable Scarecrow.

In spite of a last twenty minutes that can't quite sustain the tone of what's gone before, Batman Begins is a major achievement, and one of the finest superhero movies to date. Easily the best of the Dark Knight's big screen adventures, it manages to be a blockbuster film that's unpredictable, compulsive, superb to look at and well worth many repeated viewings. A staggering achievement, particularly considering the state the Batman franchise had got itself into.-- Simon Brew

Synopsis
Genius of mystery and intrigue Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO, FOLLOWING, INSOMNIA) helms this prequel to the Batman films based on the DC Comics series, explaining how Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) the billionaire prince of Gotham whose parents were killed in an alleyway mugging transformed into the crime-fighting superhero. With flashbacks to his privileged childhood, young Master Wayne, as he is called by the butler Alfred (Michael Caine), develops a terrible fear of bats when he falls through the backyard garden into a hidden cave. As a young adult, Wayne lives among the League of Shadows, a martial arts group in the mountains of Asia. His leaders Ra's al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) teach him strength, endurance, and unfortunately evil, against which he naturally rebels. Returning to Gotham and reinstating himself as a dapper socialite and the rightful heir to his parents' enterprise, Wayne quickly devises his secret identity, commanding help from the gadgetry expert Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). With one eye on his childhood playmate Rachel (Katie Holmes) now a beautiful woman and dedicated lawyer and the other on his mission to save Gotham from criminal corruption, Batman makes his fledgling debut. But when the blue-blooded mastermind Dr. Crane (Cillian Murphy) who steals every scene with chilling menace taints the water system with a hallucinatory substance, Batman realises he has met his first true opponent. An attitude of grave seriousness elevates BATMAN BEGINS above more cartoony Batman movies, as Nolan crafts a dark drama that thrives on sci-fi intrigue. Bale strides into the role with grace, adding refinement that is seldom seen in action-oriented films. And while the action scenes explode with high-tech glitz and fast-moving thrills, they are evenly placed among sequences of plot and character development, making for a complex and satisfying viewing experience.

Customer Reviews

Well worth the money
Originally I was attracted by the cast - nearly all British, is the first thing I noticed. And anything with Michael Caine and Gary Oldman is worth a nod. And Morgan Freeman, even though he's American, ain't bad.

I haven't seen many of the earlier Batmen films - the joke-filled, too self-conscious lightness of the one or two I had watched made them less appealing to me than they might ordinarily be - and there were childhood memories of a black and white T.V. series. Did I really have a cape and try flying around the avenue?

There was a period of my life when I got hold of some pretty good `comic book' Batmen - the sort of illustrated book that was trying to break from the sickly, `holier than thou' supper hero for children. I particularly remember one `very dark' story but couldn't name it for you.

So, good cast, I'm in the mood for entertainment, and not expensive - duly bought.

And wasn't it a good choice!

Batman Begins is an attempt to put into the film series enough realism to make the character and the stories connect to a maturing audience, to an audience (I am tempted to say post 9/11) which is less convinced by a black and white, good guy/bad guy vision of the world and where shades of darkness flick across even the brightest of lives.

Key to the concept is realism - and reason. Why did Batman become Batman? What made him take on this job, and what are the consequences of assuming the role of Revenge Artist?

I think it is one of those strange paradoxes that the closer to reality the fantasy is, the stronger the hold the fantasy has on the imagination: We need enough reality to construct our flights of fancy.

And the writers, actors, director and designers seem to have taken this to heart in this film.

Stunning sets, extremely realistic visual effects, three dimensional acting all in a sort of heightened realism create a sense of `This-could-happen' in an, `If the world were like this - and in places it is' location.

The second DVD explains a lot about what the film makers are trying to do.

Gotham City is New York/Chicago/Any City. It is not the whole world - much of the story takes the proto-Batman out into a real world and expands the horizons not only of the character, but the movie.

Batman is vulnerable - emotionally, and physically. Bruce Wayne is presented as a human and when he dons the cape, he loses something of that, becoming stronger by cutting off his humanity. It isn't a metamorphosis, it is a reduction - it is the animal inside all of us - and that is the connection frequently made (for me) by the film - not the super human flight I tried as a child, but instincts and drives lurking somewhere inside my subconscious.

Christian Bale manages the transformations of character exceptionally well - he starts as a young man with one set of thoughts and ideas, goes on a journey into the wilderness, encounters a mentor who he ultimately has to destroy, and returns to a city to take on the role of Batman - a crusader very much based on the real crusaders of old: The knights who were not opposed to a bit of immorality, dodgy reasoning and rape and pillage.

The rest of the cast is almost without exception, (and, as you would expect with the British connection) perfect.

If I make the film sound too `intellectual' or uninteresting, I apologise - it isn't either of those things - it is a very well made, high production values, action movie - maybe not for the younger children, but one teenagers and older-agers can enjoy with a couple of cans and a pizza.

Now, when is the next episode out?

A new benchmark for the genre
Aside from setting a benchmark for other franchises (perhaps most notably 007) to follow, Batman Begins is a remarkably ambitious and mostly successful attempt to bring some real substance to the comic book genre beyond mere mood. It has a sense of the epic to it, as well as an awareness of the escalation of moral quandaries that come with taking the law into your own hands that haven't been seen in a big-budget summer picture since Clear and Present Danger. It's not just a case of a superhero fighting a supervillain either: the various mobsters, evil geniuses and crooked businessmen are all part of a much larger corruption that ensures that even a semblance of moral balance cannot be restored by the end credits as per other superhero flicks. Christopher Nolan even manages to get strong performances from actors who had long ago drifted into ham and volume like Gary Oldman and Rutger Hauer. It also has a few problems, not least the lack of depth in the photography or Nolan's deficiencies as an action director (not Michael Bay bad, but not particularly good either), but they're outweighed by the pluses.

The 2-disc set boasts an impressive array of extras (including numerous Easter Eggs), although the lovingly crafted comicbook art menu pages can get a little annoying to work your way through at times. It's a shame that only a teaser trailer is included, while the 'Tankman Begins' MTV spoof has not been carried over from the Region 1 NTSC disc, but all other extras are present and correct.

Almost perfect
Batman Begins is the best Batman film made to date. Easily eclipsing the many previous versions. Christian Bale is as always excellent in the leading role and he is supported by a first-rate cast including Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman.

The film starts by covering his early years as he travels the globe studying different types of criminal and the ways in which he can fight them. The culmination of this is the training in the temple with Ducard (Lima Neeson). This is a marvellously well done sequence and probably the highpoint of the film. Its also in this sequence that you will realise that the film is really not for young children (it has a 12 rating anyway). There are disturbing images and sequences in this film.

At a little over two hours, the film does remarkably well in holding your interest, and it is only in the last section of the film that it lets itself down at all. The ending was a little too blockbuster oriented for my liking and slightly out of place with the brilliance of the rest of the film. Don't let this put you off though, because overall, and taking into account the extras disc, this is well worth getting.