by Chris Allen

Created on: March 23, 2010

Christian Bale is one of today’s more well known and gaining popularity actors.  His roles span across several different genres, including action, fantasy, western, and thrillers.  Out of all of his movies three stand out above the others; “Batman Begins”, “The Dark Knight”, and “Equilibrium”.

“Batman Begins” was the first truly serious of the Batman movies.  Bale delivered a much needed amount of personality into the characters of both Batman and Bruce Wayne, which in previous movies both characters had little to no personality there were just men that seemed to do whatever and seemed totally unrealistic.  Everyone knows that Batman’s parents were killed in the alley way one night in Gotham City but what most never seemed to realize was that the incident spawned a young man bent on revenge.  A man whose vengeance wasn’t directed towards just one man, well it was until that man was killed, but towards the entire criminal underground of the city which he would live out his life trying hard to make sure that no one else ever would have to live a life like he had without his parents.

“The Dark Knight” continues about where “Batman Begins” leaves off, only it picks up about a year or so down the road.  Here you begin to see just how dark of a character Batman himself really is, not to mention just how evil and sadistic the men he faces are.  Batman detaches himself from the typical rules that the good guys play by, his only rule is that he will never kill, incapacitate, beat the living day lights out of, and torture but never kill.  At several points in the movie he shows these colors when dealing with the some of the mobsters when looking for information and even beats Joker to find out the where abouts of Harvey Dent, the soon to become Two Face.  Once again Bale delivers an awesome performance as the caped crusader roaming the rooftops and streets of Gotham in the wee hours of the night.

“Equilibrium” was about a special agent or “cleric” (Bale) for their government and is responsible for hunting down rebels, or sense offenders.  Everyone in this new perfect Utopia is unable to feel, except for those that refuse to take their “medication” which suppresses the feelings in humans.  Bale is responsible for killing his own partner who is also a sense offender, who had hid it well.  After a short period of time, Bale decides not to take it, though the reason for doing so is very unclear, but for the remainder of the movie he did not take another dose.  He played his against his own “hunters” on numerous occasions and hid the fact that he too was a sense offender though on several occasions he came close to revealing the secret.  Bale did very good job acting out his part as a man who is supposed to show no emotion and did very well, though there were a few times that it almost slipped.  At the end Bale basically turned in several rebel leaders so that the Bale could gain access to the leader of the government, “Father”, and killed him effectively ending

These aren’t all of the movies of Bales that were very good or worthy of praise just the ones that stood out the most.  Honorable mentions would include “3:10 to Yuma”, “Reign of Fire”, and “American Psycho”.  So far I have not really been disappointed by any movie that Christian Bale has stared in and would recommend his movies to anyone interested in darker movies.

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