ruce Wayne, the scion of a billionaire industrialist, has a great fear: bats. Playing on the grounds of his stately home with young friend Rachel Dawes, Bruce falls into a disused well, awakening a flock of the flying rodents, who terrorize him. But his father, Thomas Wayne (Linus Roache), saves him, telling him: "Don't be afraid."
There's a lot to fear in Gotham City, which has deteriorated into a crime-ridden den of corruption, overseen by crime lords like Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). And it ultimately claims two more victims: Bruce's parents, murdered in an alley during a robbery.
Years later, Bruce (Bale) returns home from university, where he tells the faithful Wayne butler, Alfred (Caine), that he's not sure he'll be going back. He also shares his revenge fantasies with a grown Rachel (Holmes), who's now an assistant district attorney. She disapproves, telling Bruce that his father would be ashamed of him.
But that doesn't stop Bruce from confronting Falcone. Falcone tells him that he'll always have something to lose, that he'll never understand the criminal mind, and throws him out.
Shocked, Bruce resolves to educate himself. Heading to Asia, he becomes schooled in the ways of the underworld and also acquires martial-arts skills. But it isn't until a mysterious benefactor named Ducard (Liam Neeson) finds him that Bruce realizes there may be a higher calling for him, one that will help him channel his rage and desire for revenge.
Bruce undergoes training to join the League of Shadows, a vigilante group. But when they turn on him, Bruce escapes. He returns to Gotham.
Things have gotten a lot worse. But Bruce now has a plan. With the help of Wayne Co. scientist Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Bruce sets out to transform himself into an agent of vengeance against criminals, one modeled on the creature of his childhood nightmares: the bat.
Bale is Batman
Let's just say it up front: Batman Begins is one of the best superhero movies ever, right up there with X-Men, Spider-Man and the original Superman. Like them, it knows why the comics-born myth has endured for decades and why it has captured the imagination of generations of fans. Batman Begins goes to the heart of the story, the one Bob Kane created back in 1939, which is ultimately about a lost man who finds a measure of redemption by confronting his innermost fears and becoming the thing he dreads most, for good or ill.
Beyond that, it offers up a skilled cinematic take on the source material that captures the contemporary, gritty, urban darkness central to the Batman mythos, making it relevant and accessible in a way Joel Schumacher's and even Tim Burton's stylized and deco-flavored versions failed to.
Goyer (Blade: Trinity) and Nolan's script is intelligent, layered and focused, with a deep empathy for all of its characters and a mature understanding of Bruce Wayne's emotional turmoil. As brought to life with outstanding performances all around, the characters anchor the outlandish narrative with their emotional accuracy, giving the well-told story real weight.
Bale is the perfect choice for the central role of Wayne/Batman. His Wayne has a hint of American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, undercut with melancholy. But it's as the Caped Crusader that Bale shines: feral, at times unhinged, at times quivering with rage, always genuinely threatening. Batman is again a scary guy, as he was always meant to be.
Beyond that, Nolan (Memento) demonstrates that he can stage a big-budget visual-effects film with the best of them, though this is his first. The story finds plausible reasons for all of the elements of the Bat mythos, right down to Batman's spiky gauntlets (the better to fend off sword blows) and the Bat Signal (the felicitous pairing of mob boss and searchlight), which adds to the film's aura of reality. The action is staged with bravura, especially a chase involving a muscular new Batmobile that, for the first time in memory, shows why Batman would need one and what it can actually do. Nolan choreographs the film's centerpiece fights to highlight Batman's stealth, power and brutality. And he doesn't cheat the audience out of the big visual effects either, particularly in the finale.
