From the windswept, snow covered mountains of the Himalayas to the dark, labyrinthine streets and alleys of Gotham, Batman Begins creates a fascinating, compelling world in which the birth and evolution of the Dark Knight is not only believable, but almost inevitable. Screenwriter David S. Goyer meticulously crafts the history of a mere mortal who invents and earns a mythic personna, showing us step by step how Bruce Wayne acquired his vast wealth, his passion for justice, his physical prowess and his arsenal of crime-fighting technology.

As the orphaned and disillusioned Bruce Wayne returns home from self-imposed exile in the Tibetan wilderness, he finds a Gotham fallen ever deeper into corruption and decay, with power-mad tyrants engaged in a tangled game in which each murderous psychopath is the pawn of another. The layers of complicity are revealed, until a plan to destroy Gotham by turning it's citizens into hallucinating psychotics is discovered to be the ultimate goal of a consummate malevolent manipulator.

Batman Begins features an especially impressive cast, with the outstanding Liam Neeson as a mysterious mentor; Michael Caine as the Wayne family major-domo, Alfred; Morgan Freeman as Batman's military equipment supplier, and Rutger Hauer as Bruce Wayne's charming but cutthroat rival for control of Wayne Enterprises.

Less believable than the idea of a billionaire crime-fighter in a bat-suit is the talented Katie Holmes as a Gotham district attorney, who strives in vain to bring as much seriousness to her role as she can. Gary Oldman is always a welcome sight in film, but here his gifts for intensity and eccentricity are somewhat wasted in the part of an honest but bland Gotham cop.

In an effective supporting role, Cillian Murphy channels the essence of both Christian Slater and James Spader as The Scarecrow, while Tom Wilkinson appears as a fun to watch gangster kingpin.