14 June 2005 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news
Batman Begins is set to begin in most theaters at one minute past midnight tonight, prompting many newspapers to publish their reviews of the movie today (Tuesday). And, while there's not a Joker among the critics, a few express some misgivings about the approach taken by director Christopher Nolan. Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail writes: "All of the story is so absurdly humorless that it is dramatically inert, as if Nolan had decided the only way to make the Batman character more substantial was to put weights on his wings." Although acknowledging that the movie "does far more right than it does wrong," Ty Burr in the Boston Globe concludes that it "feints at topical notions of airborne terrorism and fundamentalist disgust with American decadence, but it quickly devolves into rubble and noise" and ends in a sequence that is all cliché. But Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune, while finding numerous faults with the film, says that he nevertheless regards it as "the best of the Batman series since director Tim Burton moved on after 1992: a violently kinetic, eerie portrait of a revenge-driven, two-faced hero ... waging pathological warfare against the fiendish master criminals who have turned Gotham City (partly recreated in Chicago) into hell on Earth." His Chicago colleague, Roger Ebert, also finds much to praise about the film, concluding: "This is the Batman movie I've been waiting for; more correctly, this is the movie I did not realize I was waiting for, because I didn't realize that more emphasis on story and character and less emphasis on high-tech action was just what was needed. The movie works dramatically in addition to being an entertainment. There's something to it." Christian Bale is also receive much positive notice for his performance in the title role. "Bale is by far the best of Hollywood's Batman corps," writes Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News. "The former child actor (Empire of the Sun) has as strong a screen presence as Michael Keaton, George Clooney or Val Kilmer, and -- as we discover here -- he is a better actor." The question remains, however, whether this new Batman will rescue the box office. Several reviewers, including some who praise the movie, express their doubts that it will attract a mass audience. Detroit Free Press critic Terry Lawson comments: "his is a grown-up comic book movie, with no comedy. ... While I greatly prefer this approach, with its life-sized performances from excellent actors and its morally ambiguous sobriety to the smash-cut alternative, it cannot be denied that Batman Begins is heavy going."
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