Review: 'Batman Begins' Stunning New Beginning Of Saga

'Batman Begins' (PG-13) (out of four)

"Batman Begins" is more than just the title of the latest Batman movie, it is the perfect description of the movie rebirth of one of the comic books' most enigmatic, dark and mysterious heroes.

Tim Burton's dark version of the Dark Knight, was light years away from the cartoonish, "Crash! Pow! Zap!" of the TV series starring Adam West. But it was still essentially a cartoon with characters that waddled and joked their way through their evil antics.

Director Joel Schumacher tried to continue the tongue-in-cheek flavor that had been established, but bad scripts sank his efforts.

Now, the director of such mind-bending films as "Memento," Christopher Nolan, has grabbed the grappling hook and taken hold of the franchise with a decidedly firm hand, bringing it back to basics and grounding the mythology in reality. Although fantastical, much of the gee-whiz factor here seems very plausible.

Instead of relegating Batman's history to flashbacks, Nolan devotes a good part of the film to showing us exactly why and how Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) became an angel of fear dedicated to helping the helpless and then disappearing into the mist. Does that sound a little boring? It could be a tad confusing at first as the director flashes back and forth between several time periods, but it is never boring.

Two traumatic events in childhood and a thwarted attempt at revenge push Wayne into a quest to run away from his fears. His encounter in an Asian prison with the mysterious Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) leads him over glaciers and mountains to the hideaway of the League of Shadows, a ninja-like training camp supposedly run by Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). It is during these scenes that we learn the code of ethics Batman lives by and is driven by.

It is a mystical, violent, terrifying regimen in which Wayne is taught how to accomplish his ultimate wish: "Instill fear into those who prey on the fearful." But Wayne is not willing to be as ruthless as his teachers, so after an abrupt end to his training and his trainers, Wayne sneaks back into Gotham City after supposedly being dead for six years.

When he returns, Wayne discovers that Gotham has disintegrated into a cesspool of poverty, larceny and corruption. With the help of his butler/surrogate father, Alfred (Michael Caine) and a gadget genius Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) -- who has a bunch of rejected or forgotten inventions just hanging around -- Wayne invents his alter ego out of one of his biggest fears: Bats. The transformation is completed with a Batcave, a tank-like tumbler Batmobile and a cape that doubles as a glider.

Batman's fear-seeking instincts zero in on a group of mobsters whose drug dealing is just a prelude to the real danger -- a psychiatrist (Cillian Murphy) who hides his own secret identity as The Scarecrow -- a villain who has a plan to literally place fear in the minds of all Gothamites.

Wayne's childhood friend, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), who is now a district attorney, finds herself in the middle of the turf war, and the only one who can save her is a man dressed like a bat who is striking terror in the hearts of all who see him.

Bale has come a long way from his debut as a young boy in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun." It is precisely the edge he portrays in movies like "American Psycho" and "The Machinist" that makes him so memorable as Batman. He has a heft of world-weariness and resolve that helps the viewer completely buy into his evolution into a crime fighter.

It doesn't hurt that Bale is supported by such heavyweight actors as Neeson, Watanabe ("The Last Samurai"), Caine, Freeman and Gary Oldman as Lt. Gordon. Their talent grounds the flights of fancy into a gritty reality.

However, among these fine actors, Holmes comes across as a lightweight. With Bale's maturity, I think an older actress would have been a better fit.

The gadgets are better than anything you have seen in a James Bond movie; the action is dark, relentless and thrilling; and the Batman legend steeped in realism, morality and passion make Nolan's "Batman Begins" the ultimate thrill for a fan of the Dark Knight comic books.