Batman Begins

I am so over Batman. I enjoyed Michael Keaton as Batman (I must have been the only person on the planet that still says that), and hated every other Batman movie after that. They just became an excuse for more loud and expensive shit.

I didn't bother with Batman Begins, mainly because it looked like another 2 hour festival of wham-bam and whatever.

Then I saw it on TV the other night. Most of it anyway - missed the first 10 minutes or so. It didn't matter. I watched 10 minutes of it and was hooked. I really liked the theme of exploring how he became Batman, and the process he went through to get there (kind of like what happened in Spiderman). The cast was also bloody marvelous, although it was a pity that -- arrgh, can't remember his name.... the cop... didn't do his bad cop thing with the pills. There simply wasn't enough of him in this movie. Oldman - that's his name. He should have lost the moustache and glasses and had a much bigger part.

In the end, I think it was Michael Caine that did it for me. He's done some terrible stuff in recent years, but he was marvelous as the butler. I know Michael did any old movie for a while, so long as it paid the tax bills, so I will always forgive him turning up in bucket loads of stinking movies, but this was not a stinker by a long shot.

Until about half an hour from the end. The bloody producers or director or script writers just couldn't resist infecting the movie with some of the crap that destroyed all the other movies. A big action sequence. A big yawn if you ask me. I wish directors would realise that in order for an action sequence to be gripping, it has to have meaning. There has to be tension and suspense. Just blowing things up or dropping trains off tracks does not equate with tension.

I'd love to see the first 3/4 of it again, but if I do, I'll switch off when they turn on the microwave thingy.