In my ongoing movie marathon,i watched the 2005 DC thriller Batman Begins. Directed by my favorite Christopher Nolan, i couldn't resist watching this movie. So after watching the movie, here's the review. Being a Christopher Nolan movie, the duration is long(just like in most of the Nolan movies), but the length is well justified considering how much in depth Nolan explains the character and his ways.
The Plot:
The movie starts with a dream. Young Bruce Wayne(played by Christian Bale) is in a greenhouse with Rachael Dawne(katie Holmes). While hiding from her, he falls into a well which was closed. Rachael goes to home and calls for help. Inside the well, because of the noise Bruce made while falling, enormous number of bats start flying outside, and he gets scared. And here ends the dream.
Bruce wakes up to find that he's in a jail. Just before his breakfast, he gets into a fight with a bunch of hustlers, and is locked in a cell. There, he meets Ducard(played by Liam Neelson) who proposes him to come visit him in the mountains if he wishes to pursue his desire to fight the evil. He represents a group called the League of Shadows. Bruce does so. He faces extreme difficulties in reaching the top, and when he does, he is greeted by Ducard. He starts his training immediately. The story goes back into the flashback as Bruce tells Ducard his story.
Bruce's young again. Post the falling into the well incident, Bruce and his parents go to an Opera. Bruce feels uncomfortable, and asks his parents to leave. While leaving, they come across a street gangster who kills both his parents. This affects young Bruce a lot. He considers himself responsible for his parent's death.
Bruce comes back to his home. He attends the trial of his parents's killers, but just when he thinks the killer's about to fall prey to him, he is killed. When he tries to reason the killers of his parent's killers, he is beaten up and thrown out of the building. He is told that being at the top of a multi-million enterprise, he will never know how the dark world operates. He takes this statement to his ego, and goes to an exotic land where he lives like a commoner, and observes the world of illegal doings.
While meeting an underworld trader, he gets caught in a police raid and lands up in a jail. And thats where the story had started.
The story comes back to the present where Bruce is in the mountains.Back again in the mountains, Bruce starts rigourous training. This training continues for sometime. He is taught by Ducard, under the supervision of a martial arts guru Ra's Al Ghul. After the completion of his training, the league of shadows asks him to kill a man who committed crime. They also disclose that their next target is Gotham city which they will wipe out compeletely. Bruce doesn't do so, and escapes. And in the process, kills everyone, but saves Ducard.
Bruce then returns to Gotham city, and joins his company Wayne Enterpises. He comes in contact with the old people he had left. He joins the R&D division of his company where he meets Lucius Fox(played by my fav. Morgan Freeman), who once was a director at the time when Bruce's father used to run the company. He introduces Bruce to various defence products that the company had developed, but not put on production. Sending Bruce to the R&D division was just a way for the board to keep Bruce away from the company's proceedings.
Then starts Bruce's pursuit of creating a new identity. He starts working on his Batsuit. And uses it to counter the criminals.
But meanwhile, a microwave vapouriser used to convert water to vapour for industrial purposes gets stolen. Later it turns out that Dr Jonathan Crane, a doctor who has been getting criminals transfered to sanitorium has been supporting Ra's Al Ghul in his evil plan to wipe out the city, by mixing his poisonous mixture in the water supply of the city, and vapourising it. Bruce later finds out that Ducard is actually Ra's Al Ghul. Ra's Al Ghul comes to Bruce's birthday party, and exposes his intentions, and burns down his house. Ra's Al intends to blow up the central water pumping station with the microwave vapouriser using a train to reach there,which would cause hallucination among the citizens, and hence cause people to kill each other out of fear(hence the city will destroy itself). Bruce manages to escape with the help of his loyal butler of his family Alfred(played by Michael Caine).
Batman then goes out to save the city. He gives Sargent Jim Gordon(played by Gary Oldman),the very officer who handled his parent's murder case when he was a child, the access to his car, and asks him to blast away some metro pillars, so that the train that carries crashes. Gordon does his work, and manages to rip off the track. Meanwhile , Batman goes into the train,holds up a fight with Ra's and when he finds that Gordon had completed his work, leaves. The train crashes, and Ra's dies.
Meanwhile, Rachael finds out about the real identity of Batman. Bruce decides that he would rebuild the burnt Wayne mansion brick by brick. In the last scene, Gordon calls Batman, and briefs him about a new criminal called "The Joker". The end
Final Take:
Christopher Nolan is one nightmare for all directors trying to compete with him. His direction has been marvellous to watch, whether it is Inception, and Batman Begins shows such a brilliant director he is. His screenplay is great.
Christian Bale, and the rest of the cast also has done a brilliant job in the movie. Michael Caine, in the role of Alfred has done some outstanding role.
My rating 4.6 out of 5
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