RETURN OF THE HIGH FLYER

A star-studded retelling of the Batman fable is refreshingly free of camp, writes Michael Dwyer

TOWARDS the end of Kings and Queen, which opens today, an adult tells a 10-year-old boy that he reminds him of Batman, that he has the same grim look and love of secrecy, and the same fear that turns into great bravery. At the beginning of Batman Begins, we get to the roots of Batman's fear: when Bruce Wayne is eight years old, he falls down a deep well and is terrified by bats.

An even more unnerving experience follows. Young Bruce (Gus Lewis) and his wealthy philanthropist parents attend an opera. When the boy is scared by on-stage bat imagery, his father decides to take him home. And a mugger cold-bloodedly kills his parents while Bruce watches helplessly.

That scene, familiar from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, establishes the guilt that will wrack Bruce for decades, as he blames himself for causing his parents to leave early that fateful night. Guilt and fear are the recurring themes in Batman Begins, which, as its title signals, is concerned with exploring Wayne's journey from brooding dark nights of the soul to assuming the crime-fighting persona of the Dark Knight.

As a young adult, Wayne (now played by Christian Bale) walks out on his vast inheritance to travel anonymously through Asia, where a mysterious mentor, Henri Ducard (played with urbane authority by Liam Neeson), puts him through a rigorous programme of mental and physical discipline. This unwisely prolonged section is saddled with some mystical mumbo-jumbo more likely to be found in glib self-help books.

Wayne's eventual return home to Gotham is timely, as the city is rife with crime and corruption. He confronts the most potent symbol of fear in his life by drawing his new image from it, devising his Batsuit and assembling the Batmobile, a formidable hi-tech cross between a sports car and a small tank.The movie has been playing for over an hour before this transformation is complete and Batman gets down to the messy business of cleaning up Gotham.

Modelled on Chicago and evocative of the cityscape in Blade Runner, this teeming metropolis is a triumph of production design, meticulously created by Nathan Crowley and atmospherically captured in predominantly nocturnal, rainswept settings by cinematographer Wally Pfister.

Confidently stepping up to the epic scale after his comparatively more intimate Memento and Insomnia, director Christopher Nolan stages the action set-pieces with terrific panache - in particular a long, breakneck car chase across streets and rooftops. That proves far more arresting, however, than the movie's final, conventional duel between good and evil.

Bulked up again from his skeletal physique in The Machinist, Christian Bale gamely immerses himself in the dual pivotal role. But the screenplay, credited to Nolan and Blade trilogy writer David Goyer, is unconvincing when he has to shift abruptly between Wayne's debonair playboy image and his own private melancholy.

Batman Begins is, ultimately, an affectionate and stylish re-imagining of the Bob Kane comic books at its source, essentially serious and refreshingly free of camp, and Nolan proves to be as adept as Kane in bringing a range of characters vividly to life.

Apart from Katie Holmes, wooden as the token woman, a goody-two-shoes assistant DA, Nolan's cast is exceptional: Cillian Murphy, chillingly callous as Jonathan Crane, the arrogant psychiatrist who doubles as the Scarecrow; an engagingly mannered Tom Wilkinson as Gotham criminal kingpin Carmine Falcone; Gary Oldman, resembling a younger William H Macy and personifying goodness as Sgt Gordon (long before he was promoted to commissioner); Morgan Freeman as the benevolent conscience of Wayne Enterprises who kits out Bruce for his tasks; and Michael Caine, warmly genial as Bruce's protective butler, Alfred.

Opens Thursday, June 16th