Reviews

I'm not a real comic book lover, but I do like good action and fantasy movies. In my opinion most comic book adaptations are pretty lame, with few exceptions: I like the Batman films by Tim Burton, because I'm a big fan of his crazy style. I also like the X-Men and Spider-Man films.

I had high hopes for "Batman Begins" after seeing the excellent reviews in the net. But these hopes were disappointed. The film is not bad, but it isn't anything special either. The main problems are these:

1. I had no emotional connection to any of the characters. The movie just went by and I didn't really care. Spiderman was much better in this area.

2. The action scenes were lousy directed. In most scenes you couldn't really see what was going on. I have the suspicion that many Hollywood directors think that they can enhance their action scenes by shaking the camera and doing extremely fast cuts. They don't enhance those scenes, they are hiding them! Maybe they have something to hide?

Conclusion: The movie will please Batman fans, but it is not the ultimate comic book adaptation.

I am very surprised to see the good ratings for this movie.

I watched the film 9 years ago and I still remember how angry I felt to sit in the movie theatre and to look at this mess. I am a big fan of John Boorman's work. I really like his movies. So I went to "Beyond Rangoon" with big expectations. But I felt like watching a dumb, cheap Chuck Norris jungle movie with all action scenes cut out. Even the soundtrack was very annoying.

I can't believe that John Boorman was the director because this movie was so badly done. I think the Burmese people deserve better films to illustrate their struggle.