Review: Batman 1 & 2

Batman Begins and the Dark Knight.

Normally, my fellow reviewer and I select movies that have three common threads; explosions, deep plot twists and, if possible, actors that have a proven track record. So I looked at him recently and said, "Have you ever seen a Batman Movie?" After his reply was, "I would not waste my money." we were off to the theatre with my Visa card.
Just for the record, I have seen the results when George Clooney and Micheal Keaton have tried to don the pointy eared mask and was not impressed, but when I saw Batman Begins, I was intrigued.

DARK KNIGHT: The secret to these two sucessful movies is that Batman is portrayed as a vigilante, not a super hero. He appears out of no where to help with the big crime problems and not to get your cat out of the tree (Spiderman, Mr. Incredible) .
The giant crime lords of Gotham have set in motion a mindset to attempt to ge the people to think he is bad news for Gotham (a vigilante not obeying police laws and values). If they can get this wave of thinking to work, the city gets rid of Batman and the crime lords flourish. It's actually a neat plot especially when there is a super hero involved that usually is touted as a saviour. It's filled with action, great scenery, good actors (Kieth Ledger as the Joker is brilliant I think) EXPLOSIONS are everywhere, the cars are cool and to top it all off it was all filmed in Chicago.
BATMAN BEGINS: Moving to Batman begins, it is a perfect beggining to the actual story. A band of immortals attempt to take out Gotham as they have done with faltering cities for centuries, but Bruce Wayne says otherwise. It's a wonderful movie about values and it shows how Bruce grew up in Wayne manor and how Batman became Batman.
Dark Knight and Begins both hit the Bat Movie Scale with a: 8.5