InCap(lan)able Reporter - Prologue

Here's the offending document (see previous post). I actually had to type this up from the dirty rag myself. Over the next few posts, I will demonstrate how every word of this travesty against lexicality is factually, morally and physically incorrect.

Incapable Crusader

Batman Begins (12A)
Running Time: 139 mins

In Batman Begins, billionaire orphan Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a young man as adrift as the Batman franchise – and that’s saying a lot.

After all-action therapy from mysterious Ducard (Liam Neeson) he returns to his hometown, corruption-riddled Gotham City, for some serious spring-cleaning. Except for Chateau Wayne, where butler Alfred (Michael Caine) resides, Christopher (Memnto) Nolan’s Gotham is dark in word and deed - a teeming murk run by mob boss Falcone (Tom Wilkinson, terrific) and wacko psychiatrist Dr Crane (Cillian Murphy). But the atmosphere evaporates when this intelligent, tortured young man initiates do-goodery by rigging up a cave full of masks and baddie-battering gadgets.

Alfred excepted, one good cop (Gary Oldman) is his only ally – he doesn’t even get a Robin. The trouble is that psychological realism only makes the simple creed of superheroism – one man against manifold evil – look silly. The second half of Batman Begins asks to be judged on thrills, but Nolan is no action director – even an OJ-style chase in a Bat-tank feels slow. “It’s not who you are underneath but what you do that defines you” says sweetheart Rachel (Katie Holmes) primly – which is fine for supermen in masks (and for that matter, actors) but shatters this film’s sophisticated pose.

Rating: 3 stars (Good)

Photo caption: Behind the mask: Batman Begins boasts some good acting but its repetition of the one-crusader-against-evil cliché lets down its sophisticated sheen

I feel unclean just posting that. Off to the bathroom to wash, then back to destroy it, letter by letter.