Nolan's re-jigging of a popular item that had certainly become something set in a particular mould, is involving; brooding and quite exciting.

Rating: 7/10 (5 June 2010)

Batman Begins finishes with its lead character telling one of his allies, with whom he has forged a steady and precise friendship, that he'll "look into it" when handed a suspicious looking playing card in an evidence bag; a verbal promising to stay on alert for the near-future when it's made aware an individual, a foe of sorts, may shortly be in need of being dealt with. The exchange at the very end is significant for two reasons, one of which is that the dialogue sequence between the lead and his ally calls to mind the previous Batman film and an odd exchange between the exact same two characters when played by different people. In 1998's Batman & Robin, Chief of police Commissioner Jim Gordon informs Batman in the most obvious, most expositional, most theatrical of manners that "....a new villain has arrived, and he calls himself Mr. Freeze!". After the emotional and weighty roller-coaster we've been on throughout the duration of Batman Begins, this small exchange between the two at the very end does not bother us; it feels like a genuine exchange of pleas and ideas between two people we believe understand each other. Secondly, the item of 'looking'; the film has just spent two or so hours looking into the past of a troubled individual and the source of both his pain and inspiration before guaranteeing to advance to the future in terms of noting what needs to be done.
In short, the film is an interesting and somewhat enthralling little mood piece that combines a number of ideas and film-making aspects to produce something rather worthwhile, which is significant given the genre. From the stretches of the childhood of the titular character's alter-ego in Bruce Wayne right the way through to attempting to keep law and order on the hostile, night-set streets of Gotham City by way of the isolated mountains of the Far East; Batman Begins is a focused and engaging detailing of an angry and chequered young man finding his way in life. Wayne is played by Christian Bale, in one of those roles of his that see him take the predominant reigns and dominate the screen with a credible performance without having to act as a foil to someone else of whom usually does a better job. Wayne's life sees him inhabit a world full of crime and poverty in the aforementioned Gotham City; a place that is bright and vibrant during his childhood as his father and owner of Wayne Enterprises takes travels with him on trains and mostly reassures that everything will be alright, in the end.
As he grows in age, the place is darker; more hostile and more threatening, a tone that director Christopher Nolan shifts when, upon leaving an opera early one night, his parents are shot in-front of him by a mugger. Consequently, Wayne's childhood demons are born out of it and the guilt that one assumes comes with the desire to have left prematurely painfully manifests. This, as one other event in which, after falling through a hole in the Wayne manor grounds and down an old shaft, a flurry of bats swarmed over him act as key triggers during the man's childhood. Wayne's first taste of justice is the sequence in which he's told, as a young boy by a police officer, that the mugger is caught. Years later, and after spending time in prison, the mugger is released and gunned down by a bystander before Wayne gets a chance to do so himself; thus being able to witness the results of a negative channeling of anger. His reaction to the shooting is the final perverse frill to the sort of activity just witnessed, and the symbolic casting away of the pistol he was going to use is an interesting rejection of firearms and vigilantism by way of murder.
Batman Begins uses its villain's goal as a secondary point of interest to the story of how Bruce Wayne became Batman, a plot linked to the intoxication of the city's water supply does not come across as daft as it sounds; the idea headed by a certain psychiatric doctor named Jonathan Crane (Murphy) who runs a local asylum and goes by the alias of Scarecrow. The film links the villain to Batman by way of Crane's lust to project fear onto the criminals of Gotham. Crane instills it into them, on whom he illegally experiments in his asylum by way of an odd hallucinogenic gas-like substance, rather than projecting fear onto them; an idea stated by Batman himself who is driven to make those that deserve it fear what he fears. Crane's appearance is preceded by Wayne's own strange and somewhat visceral confronting of his fear of bats down in a cave, a demonstration that he's made the final steps into a new realm of overcoming his fears before his first test makes its presence known.
Wayne is flanked by mentor Henri Ducard (Neeson), a rugged character whom rejects certain clichéd traits in forming his own view on events and characters within; Rachel Dawes (Holmes), a strong and free thinking district attorney whom holds her own in a male dominated world as well as his faithful butler Alfed (Caine), whose proverbs and sporadic pick-me-up tidbits have infuriated me in the past although not here; as Nolan uses them to suggest a sense of soul, exemplified in the sequence the pair of them attempt to escape a ravaging fireball above them by plummeting down a makeshift elevator into the custom built Batcave. Alfred's motivational statement is not off the cuff, but a link to the tribulations of a cowering infantile Wayne as they thunder down a shaft; the very action Wayne himself suffered when he was younger prior to his morbid fear first rearing its head. In combining the cut-and-thrust sensibility of 2000's Memento and the intensity plus attention to character from 2002's Insomnia, Nolan has produced a winner.