I suppose by now anyone who reads these reviews should be getting used to me saying that I'm not very familiar with the source material for a film. Well, here's another case where this is true. Still, Batman has always been interesting to me for much the same reasons as he's interesting to anyone: the darkness, the inner demons, etc. This film did a great job of bringing all of that to the screen for me. Christian Bale gave us arguably the best film Batman ever, and the supporting cast was great and included some surprisingly big names. Gary Oldman as a Jim Gordon who has yet to become the Police Commissioner, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred all brought exactly the right qualities to their performances. Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, and Liam Neeson were also pretty good, and Katie Holmes was surprisingly adequate without a hint of awful to her performance. And, of course, another huge part of the film was Gotham City, which had so much personality that it was practically a character itself. I really liked Christopher Nolan's take on Gotham, a grittier, more realistic version than Tim Burton's more cartoonish interpretation that still managed to feel epic.

Viewed: 6/23/2005 | Released: 6/14/2005 | Score: A

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