I think that he probably has a lot of weird and dark fetishes, though, and it probably wouldn't be as much of a romp as fucking Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Batman Begins is the better movie, but
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is more fun. There's more development, characterization and emotion in
Batman Begins, and my companion--who, as it turns out, is also a comic geek--was blown away at the faithfulness to canon.
It's probably the best Batman movie I've ever seen, and I'm a big fan of the original Tim Burton/Michael Keaton film. This effort is less comic-booky in feel. Tim Burton (and his descendant Joel Schulmacher) stylized their films quite a bit to draw attention to the cartoonish nature of the series. Big, colorful sets and costumes. Over-the-top performances by villians. Lots of monologuing. According to
the IMDB's trivia page for
Batman Begins, Director Chris Nolan (Momento, Insomnia) made his cast and crew watch
Blade Runner before they started filming this Batman movie, and this is a more subdued, bleak, desperate Gotham. Where Burton uses color and texture, Nolan uses darkness and light.
Christian Bale is top notch. He's physically beautiful (so is Cillian Murphy, who I'd never paid much attention to before), and he's captured the manic depressive, fucked up caped crusader quite well. He also pulls off aristocratic entitlement better than any of the other Batmans. His struggle with the duality of his public/masked persona is evident, and he's quite good at maintaining a simmering rage and guilty that drives the character. I was particularly impressed with his ability to act as a younger, pre-Batman Bruce Wayne. (The 8 year old version of Bruce is also very, very good.)
The side characters are also excellent, and they must have an amazing budget. Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldham. All excellent performances, especially Caine, whose Alfred was simultaneously familiar and fresh. Katie Holmes wasn't bad, though the archtype fiesty district attorney bugs me. I've seen it hundreds of times before and she really didn't add much. Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy were excellent as well, and the movie left a lot of room for sequel with this set of characters.
The only really downside was the filming of action sequences, and that's because of comparison to another action film seen recently. Frankly, I think that Doug Liman films some of the best action sequences in the business. The action shots in the
Bourne Identity and
Mr. & Mrs. Smith are thought through carefully, and each punch has not only a point, but is also very well filmed for maximum effect. I remember watching
Bourne Identity in the theater and wincing with every bounce of the head as I watched a motorcycle cop fall off his bike.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith's considerable action sequences were equally well executed. Nolan isn't an action director, and though the sequences in Nepal were well done, I've seen better. Darkness hides a lot of what's going on in the action sequences in Gotham, and contextually, it makes sense that you don't know exactly what's going on. The unknown is Batman's primary advantage, and it's not important
how Batman fucks someone up, only that he's fucked them up. But as an action fan, you want to see him fuck the guy up.
It's a dark film and a dark character. I think Nolan and Bale did an excellent job of showing how fucked up this guy really is. I'm not a devotee of the comic books (I'm a Marvel girl), but the geeks in the theater last night seemed very, very happy with the outcome.
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