Batman Begins

Bob Kane's comic-book character was the subject of no fewer than four film adaptations from 1989 and over the following eight years, but director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan proves with his new Batman Begins that the subject is far from exhausted. He has expanded on the story of the superhero Bruce Wayne/Batman, who plays the carefree playboy by day but at night puts on his bat costume to be the protector of the innocent and the terror of criminals.

Kane's comic practically never deals with the millionaire heir's development into a passionate vigilante, so that gap is filled by Nolan and his co-writer David S. Goyer. The result is a rather complex origin story that distances itself from the last two Batman films, which had plenty of bangs and crashes but portrayed the characters rather superficially. That does not mean that Nolan's film concentrates exclusively on nuanced characterisation at the expense of outward drama and spectacular action scenes. The film has it all.

In Batman Begins Batman is no invincible superhero but a human being of flesh and blood who must risk life and limb to save Gotham City from destruction and moral decay. The film has been praised precisely for its realism, which at first sounds like something of a contradiction, since few people associate Batman's universe with realism, but that is nonetheless the case here. It is precisely the realism that helps make the film and its themes, such as vigilantism and revenge, relevant.