Batman Begins
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 As a young boy, Bruce Wayne watched in horror as his millionaire parents were slain in front of him--a trauma that leads him to become obsessed with revenge. But the opportunity to avenge his parent's deaths is cruelly taken away from him by fate. Fleeing to the East, where he seeks counsel with the dangerous but honorable ninja cult leader known as Ra's Al-Ghul, Bruce returns to his now decaying Gotham City, which is overrun by organized crime and other dangerous individuals manipulating the system.
Meanwhile, Bruce is slowly being swindled out of Wayne Industries, the company he inherited. The discovery of a cave under his mansion, along with a prototype armored suit, leads him to assume a new persona, one which will strike fear into the hearts of men who do wrong; he becomes Batman!!! In the new guise, and with the help of rising cop Jim Gordon, Batman sets out to take down the various nefarious schemes in motion by individuals such as mafia don Falcone, the twisted doctor/drug dealer Jonathan 'The Scarecrow' Crane, and a mysterious third party that is quite familiar with Wayne and waiting to strike when the time is right. "As a man I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting..." The first great Batman movie has finally arrived. What came before barely scratched the surface. In fact, if you've never read a Batman comic and know him solely from his previous big screen adventures, really you don't know him at all. For years now, comicbook fans have thrilled to the depth, darkness, smartness of plotting and richness of characterisation present in every single issue of Dark Knight adventure. Yet precious little of it ever made it to the big screen. For Batman purists in particular, who knew all along how much better those films could and should have been, they were painful years. Fingers crossed, they're over now. Thanks to director Christopher Nolan and an amazing cast headed by Christian Bale, the Caped Crusader's epic live action losing streak has finally come to an end. Batman Begins is here. Happy, happy days. Blessed with an uncommonly smart screenplay, no surprise considering it was co-written by Memento's Nolan and Blade scribe David S. Goyer, Batman Begins is a serious and entirely successful attempt to finally get inside Batman's head. To explore his obsessions and the demons that drive him. For the very first time in film, Bruce Wayne is a fully realised, well-rounded person. Not just a supporting character in flashy blockbusters more interested in the superstar baddies than the tortured hero they're supposed to be about. Also for the first time, Batman is a truly terrifying piece of work. Not just some guy in a suit. As played by Christian Bale with an intensity befitting the character, all burning eyes and gruff tones, he's the scariest man in Gotham. Largely inspired by Frank Miller's classic comic book Batman: Year One, which lifted the lid on Bruce Wayne's earliest Batman adventures, Batman Begins presents the origin, training and earliest trials of the ultimate superhero. We also get to meet many of the supporting characters, good and bad, who contribute large to Batman's incredible mythology. Fighting for the angels we have butler Alfred (Michael Caine), honest cop James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and gadget man Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). On the side of the devil, meanwhile, fights gangster Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), evil genius Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and, armed with hallucinogenic fear gas and an appropriately spooky mask, fledgling super villain Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. The Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). Hovering somewhere between light and dark stands Bruce Wayne's mysterious mentor Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), an amalgam, really, of the many people who contributed to Bruce's training in the comics. Finally there's a dash of romantic interest in the form of Katie Holmes, but really she's in the film to act as Bruce's conscience, and in that capacity, she really gets him thinking about his life and purpose. Which is a good thing. Not a bad cast, eh? And all of them in the movie because they're the best actors for the roles. No one's in this just because they're famous. No one's in this because it serves their ego to strut about and ham it up. It's serious, yes. We've established that. A grown up treatment of an incredible story. But it's also amazing fun. Really intense and exciting, not as flashy as what came before, but somehow more epic and certainly more credible. And though this is a big film with lots going on, you never feel less than intimately involved with Bruce and his freaky alter ego, not to mention the many dramas and thrills experienced by those around him. It's all you could want from a superhero movie, with some added surprises you'd never anticipate. If you're a fan you've probably seen it already and have it on your list. If you're new to Batman then this is the movie that will make you a fan. And if you felt you'd had enough of Batman after the last four movies, let us assure you that this is a whole new ball game. An entirely different treatment that will grip you then blow you away. And boy, wait until you see the new Batmobile... To a large extent, superhero movies - like Bond flicks, or romantic comedies - are about reshuffling standard, generic elements. They promise something familiar yet new. Batman Begins is no exception. A lot of the ground - Bruce Wayne's efforts to be better than those he battles, to face his parents' killers and choose justice over revenge - were well-covered in both Batman and Batman Forever. There are overlaps with Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, and not just in how he (literally) learns the ropes, wins over the authorities and keep his girlfriend sweet. Batman Begins boasts a remarkably reminiscent fistfight aboard an inner-city train, and the final one-on-one with the baddie is similarly emblematic of the bigger battle for the city itself. So it's all very well being well-written and directed and acted, and exciting and funny and cool… What's actually makes this one different? For one thing it's far bleaker than Spider-Man, perhaps more so than even Tim Burton's arch-goth vision of the Dark Knight. It's not 'magical', not 'comic-book', less Batman + Robin as it like Christopher Nolan's previous, bleak movies, Memento and Insomnia. In that, it owes a lot to the comic book Batman: Year One, by David Mazzucchelli and Frank Miller - prior to his creating Sin City. Wayne and Jim Gordon seem the only men left in the city with scruples, the only men willing to make a stand against the endemic corruption of everyone - judges, policemen, everyone. Gotham City, like Wayne himself, needs to recover its soul. The villains of Batman Begins aren't costumed freaks, even if their plans are a bit whacky. Dr Jonathan Crane still has his work clothes on as Scarecrow; he just pulls on a mask, like any other hoodlum. Wayne's parents aren't gunned down by the Joker (this time), but by a down-on-his-luck crook called Joe Chill. But what makes the film especially 'realistic' (compared to other superhero movies) is the muted use of CGI. Oh, it's still spectacular: watching it at IMAX, the car chase, with the cops in hot pursuit of the Batmobile, is eye-popping! Yet, while Spider-Man's web-slinging though New York had a comic-book gloss, here the effects are rarely ostentatious. The car chase looks like they really are chasing about in cars. Real ones. Scarecrow's nightmarish mask is probably the worst CG offender, but we only ever see it sparingly. That's the secret. Batman, likewise, appears onscreen only fleetingly for his first few appearances, which just makes him that much more powerful. The shadows and sound effects do all the work for him. As they should. The film is keen to deal with the actual mechanics of being Batman. As well as seeing the military labs from where all his crime-fighting gear comes, as well as seeing his suit and his car and his weapons as military hardware, we're even told how the invoicing is done, and why he's always got spare bits of Batsuit when he needs them. The biggest explanation of all, though, and the one that really grounds the film in 'reality', is just why a bloke dressed up as a flying rodent might not be such a silly idea. Yes, it's stuff we've had before in previous Batman movies, but Batman Begins really tries to make it credible. Fear is the motivation of both goodies and baddies alike; overcoming their own and exploiting that of others. We see tough guys rendered imbecile by too much of a nasty scare, while a room full of ninjas is nothing to Bruce, so long as he's conquered his nightmares. They've even changed his parents' last night out to fit in with the theme - they've not taken their already traumatised son to a cheesy old Zorro film, but instead to some weird, scary opera. It's good, though, that the Jedi-like stuff where Bruce learns his tricks is dispensed with early on. Montage of ninjas, and training out in the wilderness, and hard-won zen wisdom usually comes in the middle of rights-of-passage films, and it's always rather humourless, dour and macho. Batman Begins is done with them in the first half hour, and when Alfred (Michael Caine) turns up to collect Master Bruce, a much better movie kicks off. Alfred's straight-forward, keep-buggering-on attitude is the film's real heart. He shares the best gags with the other careworn older men - Morgan Freeman's Fox and Gary Oldman's Gordon. And yes, Oldman is easily in the same class as the other two. Still, for all it's grounded in this good-naturedness, the film is still extremely male. There are strong supporting roles for Liam Neeson, Linus Roache, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson and Rutger Hauer - enough to keep you guessing about which of them might get most of the plot - but there's only really one woman in the whole thing. Katie Holmes is fine as the stubbornly-moral district attorney, disappointed by Bruce's wild lifestyle. The mix of love and anger and despair she feels for Bruce works very well. But Bruce's mother gets less to say than his blink-and-miss-her nanny. And then there are only the window dressing ladies Bruce chats up or takes to dinner… women who are playthings, not people. It also loses points for misjudged schmaltz. Batman stops to give one of his gizmos to a wide-eyed little boy (worried his friends won't believe who he saw), and the boy then turns up again later (conveniently), to be saved from the midst of a riot. Yeah, the child actor is okay, does the wide-eyed thing well, and manages to act his lines rather than just repeat them. But it feels too much of a sop. Yes, we can believe that the streetkids would love Batman, but not that he'd stop for them, or - much worse - volunteer his top-secret toys. Bale, however, is excellent. He does looks a bit podgy and uncomfortable in the Batman mask, but this is the first film where the Bruce Wayne persona doesn't seem as tortured and messed-up as the Dark Knight. It's a delight to see him work just as hard, to think just as quickly, in maintaining his playboy persona as he does when beating the crap out of villains. The film nicely dovetails the gains made to the city by Wayne as businessman with Wayne dressed up in rubber, hitting bad guys. It ties it in with his family history - his father helping ease the city's troubles (even, it seems, with his death), and his ancestors helping freed slaves during the Civil War. That sense of public duty offers a more realistic solution to urban decay than we might have gathered from just the fighting. On first appearance, Batman saves the day by… well, despite everything the film seems to have been saying, it's all solved by someone firing a gun. But the fight isn't over. As Gordon says, Batman making a stand as he has will only escalate the problem. We're left with the promise of bigger fights to come, with crazy villains. And in costumes. Maybe there'll even be some women, as well.  Christian Bale ... Bruce Wayne / Batman Michael Caine ... Alfred Liam Neeson ... Henri Ducard Katie Holmes ... Rachel Dawes Gary Oldman ... Jim Gordon Cillian Murphy ... Dr. Jonathan Crane Tom Wilkinson ... Carmine Falcone Rutger Hauer ... Earle Ken Watanabe ... Ra's Al Ghul Mark Boone Junior ... Flass Linus Roache ... Thomas Wayne Morgan Freeman ... Lucius Fox Larry Holden ... Finch Gerard Murphy ... Judge Faden Colin McFarlane ... Loeb Download Torrent 
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