| |
|
Having seen this last night with some friends, I must say that it was a perfectly decent Batman film. By no means great, but good enough to justify the time I spent watching it.
A few qualms...
Despite the justifications for such, the sction scenes were badly shot (or maybe edited). The car chase scene deserved to be a good ten minutes shorter, at least, and all of the action scenes were cut so quickly it made it very difficult to follow most of the time. I actually found myself feeling visually assaulted and confused by the action scenes, and not in a good way. I think Nolan has a great grasp of character, sure, but he can't shoot action to save his life.
Katie Holmes. Good god, will someone just kill her career already? She's from my home town, and by god, she's a terrible actress who has built her career upon looking vaguely cutesy. Her part would have been served better by largely being replaced by Michael Caine; imagine if Caine had been in that scene early in the film, if it had been Caine that slapped Bruce, etc. I think it would have been great, actually, but maybe I'm just making excuses to have more Alfred/Bruce interaction, because that relationship was played perfectly.
Katie Holmes played "The Woman" as in, the only woman in the film, really. Bruce is sad. Bruce misses his... mom? Well, not really, since he only ever thinks about what his dad would think of him, his dad's business, his dad's last actions and words... and so on. His Mother is a cipher, designed to die on cue and harass us no more in the plot. That rubs me the wrong way.
Insanity = evil. You get this in a lot of films; it's not just a problem with batman, but many other films portray those with mental illness as evil. Yes, I know that it's a comic book film, but it irks me that we have yet to get over the idea that all people with mental illness are evil.
Despite these problems, it was an enjoyable film. Particularly liked the character interaction, which was top-notch (but for Katie Holmes). |
|
|
