Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine (I), Ken Watanabe (I)

9 out of 10 stars

After all the iterations of Batman that we've been put through, it would seem nearly impossible that there could be anything new to say at all about the Caped Crusader. Amazingly, director Christopher Nolan proves that there is - and then some. Nolan's Batman Begins is a literal cinematic re-imagining of the beginnings of the Batman legacy, and with its stark yet powerful emotions and design, it rises easily above what we've come to associate with the remakes and adaptations of past movie franchises, which basically just put a new coat of paint (or sometimes, just high-end lacquer) on an old, musty plot and send it out for a spin around the block. Batman Begins, while honoring the origins of its hero, is so smart and fresh that it manages to wash away the old taste of the all the other Batmans that have cluttered your brain - the TV one, the animated ones, the Michael Keaton one, the Val Kilmer one, the George Clooney one, and so on and so on. It's not so much Batman Begins as it is Batman Lives Again.

That said, what makes Batman Begins so successful - its darker, more adult tone; its forsaking of glitz for drama; its devotion to the true origins of its hero; its refusal to pander to blockbuster stereotypes - could possibly prove to be its downfall. Thanks primarily to Tim Burton and all the other superhero movies that have come down the pike since the director's 1989 Batman - the Spider-Man movies and the X-Men movies to be most specific - we've come to expect a certain glamour from our comic book movies. We are conditioned to look for the easy archetypes, from the glowering, conflicted hero to the brazen, larger-than-life villain to the sexy, helpless female love interest; it's almost a game of connect the dots, and not to get too high-falutin' about it, but moviegoers (myself included) are basically Pavlovian dogs when it comes to summer blockbusters. Ring this bell, ring that bell, we'll go through the paces and oh, the movie's over.

What Batman Begins dares to do is throw out almost all the conventions you know and proceed with the basic outline in place; however, it ups the ante in terms of plot (it actually has one), its cast (made up entirely of people who are actors first and maybe movie stars second), its design (appropriately urban without being over the top), and its overall intelligence level. It's not that this Batman is hard to follow, but like Nolan's previous films - Memento and Insomnia - it assumes a certain intelligence from its audience, and isn't about to sink down to the Batman-explains-it-all-for-you cop-out. When you first start watching Batman Begins, you'll probably start off being intrigued but may wind up asking yourself: am I watching a drama or an action movie? It's smart, but is it Batman? And your tolerance for such will ultimately dictate how much you will warm to this film.

Batman Begins' mission to distinguish itself from its predecessors is immediate in its opening, which introduces us to both the young Bruce Wayne and his present incarnation. The young Bruce, while playing with childhood pal Rachel Dawes, falls down what appears to be a dry well and is overtaken by a flurry of bats, causing him to cower in a panic; the current Bruce (Christian Bale) is holed up in a Chinese prison for reasons unknown, surly and dirty and not about to take any crap from anyone. In playing out both these storylines, Nolan and co-screenwriter David S. Goyer give us the familiar Batman trappings, but in a sobering, almost more horrifying way. Bruce's parents, the rich-and-gentle sort, are gunned down in a back alley of a decaying Gotham City by the desperate, almost rabid Joe Chill; it's a heartbreaking, pointless act of violence, and not the immediate spark of fury that sets Bruce on his stylish mission of vengeance. The imprisoned Bruce, who catches a break in the form of Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), is recruited to join the League of Shadows, which professes to fight evil; it's not a hot-and-sexy induction by any means, though with its shades of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Batman, it does feel a bit more mystical than it should be. Still, the gritty upshot of these two stories, which converge when a teenage Bruce has the opportunity to off his parents' killer but is thwarted by fate and not his own conscience, is to show that this isn't the gothic Batman of Burton but instead a darker, fiercer version of the hero, one that we're not necessarily used to in our Pop Culture 101 classes, where Adam West holds court alongside Michael Keaton.

Once Bruce discovers the true methods of the League of Shadows, and in particular its menacing, mysterious leader, Ra's Al Guhl (Ken Watanabe), it's back to Wayne Manor for the buffed-up Mr. Wayne, and the mean streets of Gotham City. And these are some mean streets. This isn't your stylishly run-down Gotham, or your sunny New York verite of Spider-Man or your slick futuristic X-Men territory - it's one hugely scary city, where corruption runs rampant thanks to crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and an ineffectual police force, the only good egg of which seems to be the sad-sack Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman). The one other person who seems to care about cleaning up the city is district attorney Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), all grown-up and the movie's lone voice of honor and conscience. Bruce not only has to contend with a rotting city but a ruthless CEO (Rutger Hauer) who's taken control of the family business; intending the strike fear into the hearts of those who instill fear, Bruce creates Batman, and thus a legend is born.

Nolan cannily parallels the creation of Batman with the creation of Bruce Wayne himself, and what he drives at throughout the movie is the fact that neither is separately a man in full; both are icons indeed, but mere personas to be inhabited rather than people who actually seem to be living. Does Batman exist when he's not saving people? For that matter, does Bruce Wayne when he's not being a playboy on the town to distract from any similarities he might hold to the Dark Knight? In offering us this version of Batman, the lone superhero with no super-extraordinary powers, this is the first superhero movie since 1978's Superman that seems to understand that heroes can indeed have feet of clay, and that the dichotomy of being a mere mortal and someone super isn't breathtaking or energizing, but sometimes downright miserable. And Bale, a true actor who happens to be blessed with movie star good looks, brings these two sides of his protagonist together in a way that shows how one can't exist without the other. It's hard to imagine anyone else bringing off this transformation so effortlessly and effectively, hitting just the right emotional notes without ever straying to bathetic territory.

The fundamental plot that eventually drives Batman Begins - someone is planning on poisoning Gotham's water supply, and it's the evil Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), aka the Scarecrow, who's carrying out this plan - is your basic save-the-world-and-the-girl tale but also carries a deeper dimension to it, in both the way it addresses the plight of the inner-city Gotham and reveals the motivation of those who are behind it. Nolan manages to deftly balance the unfolding scheme with all the fun stuff we expect from the creation of Batman - the establishment of the Batcave (an actual cave), the toys that Batman arms himself with, and of course, the creation of the Batmobile, which here is less sexily sleek than scarily intimidating. If the movie makes one misstep, it's in the presentation of two characters who could seemingly be combined into one: the butler Alfred (Michael Caine), who helps Bruce create Batman, and the scientist/gadget dude Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who is basically an Americanized version of James Bond's Q. Caine and Freeman are both great fun to be around, but switching from one character to another in Batman's metamorphosis, is a bit exhausting and de-energizing.

Not so with the rest of the characters, especially Oldman's Lt. Gordon, who's a perfect human foil to Batman's otherworldliness. Oldman also gives a performance that wouldn't be out of place in a film noir or cop drama; ditto Wilkinson, whose Falcone is a perfect mix of menace and arrogance (his spread-eagle stringing-up on a spotlight, a precursor to the Batsignal, is a nice touch). Neeson easily makes up for his Jedi-induced stupor in the recent Star Wars flicks, and Holmes, while not nearly as good as everyone else, is nonetheless solid and effective (her performance is more of a triple compared to the other home runs in the movie). And a lot of credit should go to Murphy, who makes the Scarecrow a palpably realistic villain, one you might be more likely to encounter on the street than, say, the Joker - though there is a nice, um, joke about him towards the end of the film.

Ultimately, though, despite Bale's strong performance, this is pretty much Nolan's movie all the way, and he manages to make a blockbuster that's neither pandering nor stupid nor simplistic. Usually it's not best to describe movies in terms of what they're not, but in today's movie age, when we go in expecting something to be not bad rather than actively good, it's important to acknowledge a movie that not only surpasses our expectations but does so by being something actually great and impressive and almost important. If audiences respond, Batman Begins could change the landscape of summer blockbuster, for the better. Maybe then, like the residents of Gotham City, we'd no longer live in fear of the ugly behemoth that's lurking around the next corner - or in this case, the next opening weekend.