A Dude in Cape and Tights? Yes. ‘Batman Begins.’
June 24, 2005
“Anyone who runs around in a bat costume,” says Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in Batman Begins, “has got to be … ” He pauses to twirl a crazy signal around his head. Batman’s issues come to the forefront in this seventh live-action movie of the franchise, where audiences get a ride inside Batman’s head for almost two hours, adding fear and psychological self-awareness to an otherwise one-dimensional and wacky superhero.
In this retelling of how Batman came to be, the movie’s stronger Asian influences surround Bruce Wayne as he treks through China as a criminal vagrant in the film’s opening. After a stint in a gulag-style prison, he finds himself training in ninja school located on a remote, snow-capped mountain. There, he overcomes his childhood phobia of bats, while coping with feelings of guilt over the death of his parents. However, his fixation on crime leads him to return to Gotham City as his Batman alter-ego, and spend his billionaire dollars on hi-tech gizmos to reclaim the city from organized crime.
The weaker Asian presence is in the actual Asian faces from the film. If you expected a significant role from Ken Watanabe (Memoirs of a Geisha, The Last Samurai), expect to be disappointed. He plays a ninja school head teacher who acts more like a fanatical cult leader than a real, living person. He pretty much just says a few dramatic lines. Given the parallels between treatment of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror and the treatment of Japanese Americans in World War II, some may find it troubling to have a Japanese actor in the role that was originally a global terrorist of Arabic background. The film’s screenwriters Bob Kane, David Goyer and Christopher Nolan seemed to throw this guy into the movie because they needed to attach an extra evil face into the story.
So aside from the random evil Asian guy and a seemingly endless action sequence at the end, the final incoherent plot twist reminds you that you’re really watching a summer action flick. Up until that point, Batman Begins is as deep, dark and intriguing as any great psycho-drama could be.
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