Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Tom Wilkinson, Gary Oldman.

Batman is back. Back with a vengeance. For a long time now, loyal fans have been waiting for the Batman film franchise to be rescued, especially after the disastrously campy "Batman and Robin" (1997) and "Batman Forever" (1995) directed by Joel Schumacher.

Even Christian Bale (the new Batman/Bruce Wayne) kept reiterating in press conferences how he felt Batman was not properly represented in the past. Now Christopher Nolan ("Memento", "Insomnia") has taken over and delivered brilliantly.

The movie is dark, with more emphasis on story and character and less of hi-tech action and effects. The movie doesn't simply inform us about Batman's beginnings but carefully explores the tortured path that led Bruce Wayne from a parentless childhood to a lonely adult life.

The child Bruce Wayne witnesses his parents' death and spends his entire adult life avenging their death. The movie begins with Wayne falsely arrested and thrown into prison.

There he meets Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), who offers to rescue him and make him an associate of the gang led by Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). Ducard trains him to become a fighter.

Wayne returns to Gotham but has little interest in his father's multimillion-dollar corporation till he meets Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who works with gadgets in the company basement.

He slowly starts creating the Batman persona with the gadgets, costume and the cave.

Still unhappy, Wayne tries to connect emotionally with his childhood friend Rachel (Katie Holmes). Slowly all his problems start resolving when he takes on villains like Dr. Jonathan Crane aka Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and Ducard.

Christian Bale in is good the lead role. A dedicated actor, he took five months to beef up for this movie after the recent "The Machinist", where he looked skeletal.

He is one of seven principal actors among 10 in "Batman Begins" who are British. To add to the British flavour, the director is English and more than half the film was filmed in London.

Bale is believable when he goes through the rigours of the training to eventually become Batman, a hero different from the other superheroes in that he does not have superpowers.

This is an ordinary man who is an extraordinary fighter albeit with some really cool gadgets and one heck of a car - the Batmobile, which has been modified for this movie and looks like a Humvee-Lamborghini hybrid.

Though the movie will be talked about more for its emphasis on its psychological aspect, it is packed with enough action to catapult it into the blockbuster league. The plot is linear with a few flashbacks to illuminate the traumas driving Bruce Wayne to become Batman.

It should please the aesthete as well as the 15-year-old who just wants to watch a bash 'em up caper.

Joel Schumacher took over the reins from Tim Burton ("Batman", "Batman Returns"), who stayed true to the spirit of the Batman comics.

Schumacher veered the series off into straightforward cartoon-ish action while compromising on the psychological complexity of the character, something that is amply restored by Nolan.