..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
Batman Begins
Chirstopher Nolan’s smart and successful reworking of the Batman franchise, Batman Begins, has no distinctive visual style. It does have an intelligent, well-told narrative that is both philosophically stimulating and adeptly paced. The characters are interesting and their feelings are empathizable. The film embraces the pop trappings that are an essential carry over from its comic book source, and yet it remains firmly anchored in a realistic unfolding of events. Even the stunts and special effects, while fanciful, remain grounded in an accessible alternate reality that is no more than a slight variation of our own. The 2005 blockbuster, which has been released by Warner Home Video as a Two-Disc Deluxe Edition (73216, $31), is fully engaging entertainment, and yet the blandness of its look retards that engagement. The film invites multiple viewings, but not with any sort of feverish enthusiasm. It is likely to be enjoyed, but less likely to be cherished.
Christian Bale stars as a wealthy orphan who adopts a crime-fighting persona after traveling to Asia and undergoing an intense martial arts training. The intelligence that prevents the film from succumbing to the usual Batman sillies is underscored by the psychological and philosophical content of the Asia sequence, but it is also reinforced when the action gets into high gear. The hero faces and overcomes challenges, but you never feel like he is biding his time so that the filmmakers can get the most out of their effects. There is a fight on an elevated train that is similar in some respects to the fight on the train in Spider-Man 2, but while the fight in Spider-Man 2 was flashier and maybe even more exhilarating, the fight in Batman Begins means more, and is more intellectually engaging, so you are less likely to zone out while its pandemonium ensues. Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Tom Wilkinson are among the co-stars, and they all avoid the flamboyance associated with the stars appearing in earlier editions of the franchise, focusing instead upon delivering performances that can keep the wilder aspects of the narrative in check. You wouldn’t think that the film had stars at all until you read the closing credit scroll and realize how many of them were actually employed.
The picture is presented in letterboxed format, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is solid and crisp. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has many good directional effects—when one of the villains uses a hypnotic voice, it surrounds you—and plenty of power. The 140-minute feature (roughly, the set-up, establishing who the hero is, runs 40 minutes, and then the ‘regular’ story kicks in) has an alternate French audio track in 5.1 Dolby, optional English, French and Spanish subtitles, a trailer and a cute 5-minute skit shot for the MTV Movie Awards that features Jimmy Fallon and Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder, intercut with clips from the film. Also featured is a wonderful jacket insert booklet, which contains a reprint of the very first Batman comic book tale as well as two of the later comic book stories that served as inspirations for the film (one being decidedly more Oedipal than the film’s adaptation of the same sequence).
The second platter has an extremely annoying menu design, although it is also presented as another comic strip sequence, and if you advance to the very end of it, you can access a standard but still incomplete menu. The platter contains about 110 minutes of production featurettes, many of them quite rewarding, including an overview of the comic book’s history, a look at the movie’s impressive production design, an excellent piece about designing the hero’s costume, interviews with the cast, and an examination of the special effects, which were done real whenever possible (they made a workable car for the hero that performs most of the stunts seen in the film). There is also a text segment providing backgrounds on the gimmicks and characters, and an excellent collection of poster designs.
November 2 , 2005DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
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