Rough Start

the bat came back: Christian Bale steps into the Batsuit.

Batman's origin story explores, critiques and maybe justifies vigilantism.

Batman Begins

by Cindy Fuchs

Bitter and restive, the Dark Knight has more than dead parents on his mind. As Batman Begins begins, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is beset by traumatic memories, from a childhood fall into a bat-swarmed well to the departure of a close friend. His brief reverie gives way to the present — that is, his imprisonment in China, where he faces more potential trauma, in the form of a looming fellow inmate who proclaims, "You're in hell, and I'm the devil." Bruce is not impressed. Oh no, he grimaces, "You're not the devil. You're practice."

It's a decent first line, setting up Bruce's determination and fury, as well as his grim arrogance and comic timing. It also introduces him to martial arts mentor Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), who observes his throwdown with a squad of this devil's hard-bodied friends, then invites him to join up with the League of Shadows, following his testing trek up a mountain with a rare blue flower in tow. At the top, Bruce reveals that his "practice" has barely prepared him for keeping up with a band of mostly anonymous vigilantes resolved to kill every last villain on earth, or at least those inhabiting Gotham City, Bruce's old stomping ground.

Following some indeterminate time spent training with Ducard and the cryptic mystic Ra's Al Ghul (a criminally underused Ken Watanabe), Bruce heads back to Wayne Manor, by way of a quick call to Alfred (Michael Caine), who arrives within hours sporting transportation and a change of clothing. As Bruce sets about his self-appointed cleanup mission, the camera dotes on origin-story highlights — the design of the cowl, the darkness of the cave, the purchase of the Batmobile, here a frankly awesome futuristic all-terrain military vehicle capable of all manner of vehicular acrobatics.

Bruce names his crusading self Batman, of course, in honor of the creatures who so frightened him as a child — and to make sure you won't forget it, the film repeats this traumatic image every time Bruce hesitates over what to do next. His essential dilemma has to do with distinguishing revenge from justice, an opposition conveniently framed by his childhood friend Rachel (the seriously lackluster Katie Holmes), grown up to embody a combination romantic interest/moral conscience.

Now an earnest assistant district attorney in Gotham, Rachel is shocked to learn that Bruce has actually returned not to offer a victim's statement at the parole hearing of his parents' shooter Joe Chill (Richard Brake), but to shoot him (an intention thwarted by the fact that someone else gets there first — apparently courthouse security offers little in the way of metal detection). Rachel's chiding, however, only moves Bruce to glower some more, at which point she drops him off in the seedier part of an overwhelmingly seedy city, but not before she articulates her definition of the terms at hand: "Justice is about harmony," she intones, whereas with "revenge, you make yourself feel better."

With the movie's central theme thus reduced to fortune-cookie concision, Batman emerges full-blown, cape flapping and big music booming. His initial assault on a pack of henchmen working for kingpin Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) is rendered with thrilling smash-up spasticity. The blows and the cuts run simultaneously, dark and hard to read, along with whomping and whooshing sound effects. While Batman takes up crusading, Bruce starts acting the playboy, perhaps to distract media attention away from what's really going on below the Mansion: namely, the construction of a myth, with help from Alfred and Q-type genius Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman).

This construction is the plot here, which means that the seeming plot — Batman's fight with Falcone, aided by Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) — gets relatively short shrift. Too bad, because Scarecrow's primary scheme has to do with populating Arkham Asylum with a slew of nutty masterminds, their nastiness enhanced by a weaponized hallucinogen, which he also means to release into the Gotham water supply. The effects of this drug recall the blurry images of Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder — whippy, toothy and darkly nightmarish.

The thematic connection between Lyne and Nolan's visions is more compelling than the visual, since both films lament the loss of official virtue, as institutions and interests have long since slid into so-called corruption. On one hand, such elision makes vigilantism seem like the only answer, but it also leaves no choice but "escalation" to more spectacular attacks and super-villains, as noted by last "good cop" Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman, underplaying to perfection here). As police, legal, corporate and criminal forces all hang together, the movie suggests that Batman's scary loner provides one possible answer, flawed and mortal as he may be.

Self-righteous, flagrantly emotional as well as coldly rational, Batman's sense of mission involves effective strategies of terror (some resembling the as-long-as-no-one-holds-us-accountable tactics favored by the current U.S. administration). Batman means business, in the trendy forms of franchise and vengeance. He feels better, and you're supposed to as well. It's a smartly ambiguous and wholly marketable deal. And its utter darkness is today only to be expected.

Batman Begins Directed by Christopher Nolan A Warner Bros. release Now playing at area theaters