Top notch superhero movie. A great movie for fans and wannabe fans.

Rating: 8/10 (18 June 2005)

This is an outstanding super hero movie. I had a lot of fun, even though I loved the Tim Burton Batman movies, and did not really want to see this movie made. Batman's super powers are not so super, and the treatment of the mental and spiritual nature is more in depth. I liked the tie between the childhood fears and the batman character. It was refreshing that there was no 007-style comic relief. Top performances by Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. The art direction was solid, but not as great as the Tim Burton films. The movie gets 8 stars because it is a great movie only in its own universe of super hero movies. It does not really tell a universal story--only a story about how a guy becomes a superhero, which of course is make-believe.