Like good people everywhere, I spent last night in a dark room watching Christian Bale kick unbelievable amounts of ass. The verdict? Batman Returns is undeniably the best Batman film ever made, and is probably one of the best action flicks I've ever seen.
First, I'm a comic geek. Not so much anymore, but for years, young Ezra received his allowance entirely in comic books, five a week. When I was in Vermont working for Dean, the mosquito-infested flop house I lived in was 150 feet from a Borders -- an air-conditioned, open-till-11 Borders where I read every graphic novel in the store. And so, for me, the last few years have been good. Franchises have been hitting the screen in peak form. The X-Men movies were great, Spiderman was fun, LOTR (not originally a comic, I know), was superb, etc. But Batman's the toughie, few powers but heaps of psychological trickery. And my did they ever get it right.
Bale is a fantastic Dark Knight. His storyline -- and this is a shocker -- actually makes sense, not only in making him a hero, but in making him the sort of hero he is. Liam Neeson, playing the villain, is similarly superb (maybe more so), and his plot twist is fantastic. Morgan Freeman is in top form, as is Michael Caine. Whoever plays Gordon does great work (and his ending monologue on escalation is brilliant), and Katie Holmes, for what it's worth, does the best she can. The Scarecrow and his fear-inducing toxin are handled beautifully. The violence honors the Batman mythology by refusing to let you see it, it's all fear and trickery and appearance and illusion. Some dislike that (including my girlfriend, brother and sister-in-law), but I found it an essential ingredient in the film's tone. In short: see this. Twice. Like I will.
As for quibbles, they've got spoilers, so I'm putting them behind the jump. Trust me, don't read on if you've not seen the film. They're too minor to enter the theatre thinking about.
