Product Description

In an effort to deal with the death of his parents years before, a young Bruce Wayne travels the world in search of answers and comes back to Gotham City with the skills necessary to fight the injustices around him.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 14-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18 in DVD
• Brand: BALE,CHRISTIAN
• Released on: 2005-10-18
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 140 minutes

Amazon.com
Batman Begins discards the previous four films in the series and recasts the Caped Crusader as a fearsome avenging angel. That's good news, because the series, which had gotten off to a rousing start under Tim Burton, had gradually dissolved into self-parody by 1997's Batman & Robin. As the title implies, Batman Begins tells the story anew, when Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) flees Western civilization following the murder of his parents. He is taken in by a mysterious instructor named Ducard (Liam Neeson in another mentor role) and urged to become a ninja in the League of Shadows, but he instead returns to his native Gotham City resolved to end the mob rule that is strangling it. But are there forces even more sinister at hand?

Cowritten by the team of David S. Goyer (a veteran comic book writer) and director Christopher Nolan (Memento), Batman Begins is a welcome return to the grim and gritty version of the Dark Knight, owing a great debt to the graphic novels that preceded it. It doesn't have the razzle dazzle, or the mass appeal, of Spider-Man 2 (though the Batmobile is cool), and retelling the origin means it starts slowly, like most "first" superhero movies. But it's certainly the best Bat-film since Burton's original, and one of the best superhero movies of its time. Bale cuts a good figure as Batman, intense and dangerous but with some of the lightheartedness Michael Keaton brought to the character. Michael Caine provides much of the film's humor as the family butler, Alfred, and as the love interest, Katie Holmes (Dawson's Creek) is surprisingly believable in her first adult role. Also featuring Gary Oldman as the young police officer Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as a Q-like gadgets expert, and Cillian Murphy as the vile Jonathan Crane. --David Horiuchi

Batman at Amazon.com

All Batman DVDs	Batman Begins 101: A Comic Book Primer	Where Have I Seen Christian Bale?
All Batman Comics and Graphic Novels	Batman Toys	Batman Begins Soundtrack

Stills from Batman Begins (click for larger images)

From The New Yorker
And ends with a whimper. Christopher Nolan, working with a screenplay that he wrote with David S. Goyer, has attempted a literal-minded myth of creation. The orphaned young Bruce Wayne (a gloomy Christian Bale) undergoes an initiation in some nameless Asian snow-capped mountains, where he's trained by a morally ambiguous adjunct (Liam Neeson) to a shadowy ninja vigilante leader (Ken Watanabe). Neeson, wearing a pointy little beard, keeps knocking Bale down as he says such things to him as "To conquer fear you must become fear." The screenplay sounds as if it were written after a course in self-realization taken on Santa Monica Boulevard, and the direction is both pompous and cheesy, with ridiculous plot developments and lots of whirling movement shot so close that we can't really see anything. Gotham is no longer a malignant paradise of evil; it's just dark. With Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine wasted in poorly written roles as Batman's allies.-David Denby -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Grim & Gritty Version of the Dark Knight, As Bob Kane Would've Liked!
Bruce Wayne's parents brutally murdered -- Bruce comes to terms with his fears and grief and revenge to become a symbol for justice and an avenger. The Scarecrow and Ras a'Ghul come up with a plan to continue the tradition of centuries started by the League of Shadows -- eliminate Man's growth, keep him down, even if you have to kill him to do it.

The movie succeeds on several levels, thanks to the great screenplay by Christopher Nolan Memento (Widescreen Two-Disc Limited Edition) and David Goyer, JSA #40 (Justice Society of America) a cool comic book writer in his own right.

To keep this review SHORT, I liked several things about it. The cool Batmobile! The previous CEO, into power and military contracts being bought out and dismissed (More could have been done with the whole corporate evil entity thing but I digress)... Jim Gordon, (Gary Oldman, The Scarlet Letter the only guy with any decency and morality, comes out on top.

The second disc in this set is great, too. Great "making of" clips, including Christian Bale's transformation into the Bat; interesting facts and story points not in the film and a fun spoof of the movie.

I thought Katie Holmes' Pieces of April character a bit weak, although her performance with the Scarecrow as he rode in on a horse was fairly intense.

This is leagues above Batman & Robin! Batman & Robin (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Tim Burton's version was quite well done as well. Batman (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Now time for Dark Knight! The Dark Knight [Theatrical Release]

"Limited Edition Gift Set" Ain't Worth It.
Of course, this review refers to the regular DVD edition, as the BD gift set of the film is apparently loaded with goodies. As it is, the only thing THIS one is good for is, once you remove all the postcards and zip drive (nice that I now finally have one, but what the heck is it doing in this?!), you can use the box to hold both the two-disc "Batman Begins" DVD and the two-disc "Batman: Gotham Knight" DVD. The latter is more of a special feature-style thing, anyway, rather than a real stand-on-its-own feature.

Underappreciated film, may get another look with new DK film
I think this film has been under appreciated because it is not a traditional action film or superhero film. It is a hero's journey, as in the old times. Like most such journeys, the protagonist is thrown into the situation by circumstances beyond his control. But, the journey is of his own making.
Teens may not like it as much because it explores the broader themes of law, justice, ends justifying the means (or not), and what it really means to be good vs. evil. It does not do this just from a few tossed off lines (such as the new DK movie does), but through the story arc itself. Hopefully some will understand better the ambiguity of our governmental actions around the world and the difficulties of trying to balance safety/security against freedom/rights.
Really worth seeing.