Movie Review: Batman Begins

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

Took in the latest installment of the caped crusader last night. It was very good. Great? No. Very good? Yes. For those of you living under a cinema rock, the Batman is back, thanks to Christopher Nolan, director of Memento and Insomnia. And he's back with a vengence. For lack of a better term this newest installment can be considered a prequel. But in many ways, it's not. It's almost as if Nolan is ignoring the previous Bat-movies and starting afresh. Through a series of flashbacks, we see how Batman got his name and the first twenty minutes or so intersperses these flashbacks with Bruce's training with the "League of Shadows." Liam Neeson plays the role of Ducard, leader of the aforementioned League. In a departure from past Neeson roles, he's involved in a lot of action. Moreso than what you saw in Star Wars.

I think Nolan did a great job of fleshing out Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father. In Tim Burton's movie, you only saw his father when he was getting shot, but you never knew anything about him. Nolan also did a fantastic job with Lt. James Gordon. It was actually fun to see what the commisioner did before he was commissioner. I'm not going to touch on the storyline or the villains revealed.

What I liked about this movie was that it was very organic in nature. And by "organic," I mean that it felt rather believable. None of the campy parades down the streets of Gotham, or secret underground Penguin lairs. It all made sense and fit well. I'm going to give it a "9" on the 10-point scale. It was very good, but it didn't leave me with the feeling that "Wow, that was awesome!"