A movie that stands alone, and not just as a "Batman" movie.

Rating: 10/10 (20 June 2005)

To prepare yourself to see this movie, forget everything you know about Batman. This sounds clichéd, and it is, but this is the best advice I can offer you. Forget Joel Schumacher (if you haven't already), and, although we may love Tim Burton, forget him too. Prepare to see the genesis of a superhero in the most plausible, realistic sense. Expect plenty of action and fight scenes, but expect them to be embedded in a deeper context, as opposed to the the mindless "pow" and "zowie" days of Batman. We've seen superhero movies well done (the Spiderman movies, for example, are generally regarded as well done), but we have yet to see the story of a superhero treated as what it has represented, from its creation to its popular context. Batman is not just some fantastic, idealistic crusading crime fighter who, in the end, makes everything better and loves everyone. Batman is foremost a man, flesh and blood, before he is anything else, and Christopher Nolan ably presents the conflict within Bruce Wayne that inevitably gives rise to the Dark Knight. He gives Batman, and even Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul plausibility, and makes the action, even the car chase, mean something - he makes you care what happens to Bruce Wayne, and he makes you think about why he's doing exactly what he's doing. You will find yourself in awe not at an awesome batmobile, an awesome batwing or an awesomely terrible batsuit with nipples, but at the awesome power one man, fueled by both a psychotic rage and an idealistic compassion, can come to possess. Batman Begins is not only the best superhero movie made yet, but one of the most ably accomplished action movies of all time.