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100This 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.
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100A great movie, period. It's great because it's so real.
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100For the first time since "X-Men," I was on the edge of my seat anticipating a sequel, wondering who'd play the Joker and how quickly Nolan - it must be Nolan! - can bring the next chapter of this story to the screen.
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100A confidently original, engrossing interpretation.
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100A rousing, reverent, often brilliant re-creation of a seminal comics character, Batman Begins proves Batman is at home in the 21st century as he was in the 20th.
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91It's witty, gripping good fun.
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91Technically, the film is consistently impressive. It creates a grimly gothic vision of a crime-ridden and depression-ravaged Gotham City, a dandy pair of chase sequences involving the new generation Batmobile and a range of innovative visual effects.
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90For Christopher Nolan to turn Batman Begins into such a smart, gritty, brooding, visceral experience is astonishing. Truly, Batman does begin again.
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90A carefully thought out and consummately well-made piece of work, a serious comic-book adaptation that is driven by story, psychology and reality, not special effects.
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90Conceived in the shadow of American pop rather than in its bright light, this tense, effective iteration of Bob Kane's original comic book owes its power and pleasures to a director who takes his material seriously and to a star who shoulders that seriousness with ease.
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90Batman Begins emerges from the darkness and leaves a powerful, lasting impression.
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88The action scenes are, for the most part, kinetic and exciting - things that have rarely been true of fights and chases in the superhero's previous incarnations.
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80Not just one of the best "comic book" movies ever made, but also one of the best films of the year.
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80Significantly grittier than previous Bat-beginnings, this finds new things to do with, and say about, a character who's been around since 1938.
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80Of course, a Batman movie is nothing without a Bruce Wayne, and, by a mile, Bale is the best of a lot that has ranged from the square-jawed slapstick of Adam West to the more dedbonair stylings of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney.
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78At times it feels almost too busy with plotting. There's so much going on, and so much to take in, that it leaves you winded. But that's origin stories for you. No one ever said setting up a savior would be simple.
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75The buildup is steadily engrossing. That's because Nolan keeps the emphasis on character, not gadgets. Gotham looks lived in, not art-directed.
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75Nolan is a fascinating, offbeat choice for a huge movie franchise such as this. Just as Bale turns Batman into a near-tragic obsessive -- a Scarlet Pimpernel with the soul of a Hamlet and Monte Cristo -- Nolan turns Batman Begins into something much closer to Miller's "Dark Knight" interpretation.
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75Batman Begins is a mature take on material often relegated to the kiddie file, and it's simply the latest proof that, when treated properly, comic books are a viable art form for all ages. Bring on the sequel.
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75What you get out of Batman Begins depends on what you bring to it. It is the most faithful to the origins of the comic strip and it sets up a series very different from the four made by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher between 1989 and 1997.
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75Best of all, there's just the pleasure of seeing something that's both fantastic to the eye and emotionally dimensional. This is how to make action movies.
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75In Batman Begins, Christian Bale gives us the best Bruce Wayne that has ever graced the screen.
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70A mostly successful attempt to resuscitate a series soiled by silliness, sloppiness and Joel Schumacher.
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70The movie is satisfying, though -- at least by the standards of that depressing phenomenon, the superhero "franchise."
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70Ambitious, well made but not exactly rousing.
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70Batman Begins summons up moments of great eloquence and power. If only its cast of characters was as fully inhabited as its turbulent city.
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63Burton gives us SuperDude; Nolan gives us Sir Subdued.
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63The early going -- say, an hour -- is spent in a fatigued daze. A few powerful jabs eventually punch things up.
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63Not bad for summer jollies, au contraire, but -- "Holy Raised Bar, Batman!" -- let's pray that the next installment measures up to the sequel summits of "Spider-Man 2" and "X2."
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63All of the story is so absurdly humourless 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.
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60The result is handsome and logical, but missing the spark that would make it thrilling.
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60Nolan and his co-screenwriter David Goyer can only press the big buttons so hard-it's still an old-school superhero summer movie, the plotting tortuous, the characters relegated to one-scene-one-emotion simplicity, the digitized action a never ending club mix of chases and mano a manos.
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50Delivers enough action to please Saturday-night crowds, if not the surreal wit that made the first two "Batman" movies, directed by Tim Burton, so entertaining.
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50Batman Begins is obvious from the get-go - and almost no fun.
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50Begins, at two-hours-plus, is a nonstarter.
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50Nolan's effort is not dishonorable, but what it needs, and doesn't have, is a Joker in the deck--some antic human antimatter to give it the giddy lift of perversity that a bunch of impersonal explosions, no matter how well managed, can't supply.
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50A good as the performances are, and as dutiful as Nolan has been in preserving the Kane legacy in Batman Begins, there's something joyless about the enterprise.
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50The young Welsh-born actor Christian Bale is a serious fellow, but the most interesting thing about him--a glinting sense of superiority--gets erased by the dull earnestness of the screenplay, and the filmmakers haven't developed an adequate villain for him to go up against.
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50There are strong turns by Michael Caine as Alfred the butler and Tom Wilkinson as a ruthless crime boss.
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40Needs much more energy and kinetic flow -- less dolor and more dolomite.
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40Even if there were a great movie here, it would have been undermined by two lead actors who are barely even there, asked to deliver lines they can't handle: Bale, playing the Batman with clipped wings, and Katie Holmes as an assistant district attorney who doesn't have the gravitas to pass as an intern. Come back, Alicia Silverstone; all is forgiven.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 424 out of 462
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Mixed: 11 out of 462
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Negative: 27 out of 462
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