Batman Begins

(Herald rating: ****)

The name was always going to be a problem. Calling it Batman-starts-over-in-the-hope-you'll-and-forget-those-90s-Bat-flicks-which-just-plain-sucked would have better summed it up, but would have created problems with the poster.

Batman Rebooted, while accurate to the spirit of this surprisingly good back-to-bat-basics superhero flick would have sounded too Matrix-y.

So the understated Batman Begins it is. Although it could also be an acronym: Buff English Guy In New Suit. Except, yes, yes, Christian Bale is Welsh. He's also oddly well-qualified for the job. Seeing him in the guise of wealthy Bruce Wayne it's hard not to be reminded of Bale's Patrick Bateman (aha!) in American Psycho.

And like Wayne, he's been orphaned and ended up in a prison in China before - where we first find Wayne at the movie's beginning - when he was the child star of Empire of the Sun.

Got a good chin too, which is important in a role where the jawline is sometimes everything. The angularity of Bale's face neatly sets him apart from his three square-jawed predecessors. So does the way he glowers from the mask and talks in an angry rasp. It all helps convince that, yes, Bale is the battiest yet. Maybe it should have been called Batman Unhinged.

Fortunately, the film delivers a riveting time showing how he got that way. It's also bold enough not to ignore the history of previous screen incarnations - how Wayne's parents were murdered takes its cue from early comics and differs from Tim Burton's 1989 version, while the film also leans heavily on Frank Miller's Dark Knight series.

It feels grounded in a world that just occasionally needs comic-book or action-movie logic to get by.

And it reminds that Batman is a superhero only by virtue of his physical prowess and his cool gadgets. And the best parts of Batman Begins are in its engrossing explanation about why this lonely anti-social playboy would want to take on the Gotham underworld with an alter ego dressed as a bat.

The film takes a while for him to put on the pointy ears. First there's his ninja-training at the hands of the mysterious Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson in a mentor role, fancy that). He's the lieutenant of a group led by Ra's al Ghul (Ken Watanabe), who have their own ideas about keeping global evil in check. They also provide the cues to the film's post-9/11 conscience, one which runs deeper than you might expect from a popcorn flick.

Batman Begins is also refreshingly free of relying too much on obvious digital effects, its gritty look not far from that of the X-Men franchise.

But that doesn't stop too many of its action scenes - especially the fights - becoming incoherent.

Still, the stealth sports-tank that is the new Batmobile is one sign that this rethink of Batworld hasn't lost a sense of fun.

It might be grunty, gritty and take all that Bat-lore as seriously as the fans but fortunately, it's funny too.

That's mainly care of the scenes involving Caine's Alfred the butler and Morgan Freeman as Wayne Enterprises' resident genius Lucius Fox.

And while he's not the OTT pantomime villain of past Batflicks, Cillian Murphy as psychiatrist Dr Jonathan is creepy even before he reveals his nasty alter-ego.

It's disarming to see Gary Oldman playing a good guy as Lieutenant - one day Commissioner - Gordon, the last honest cop left in Gotham.

And it's got Katie Holmes as a crusading district attorney. She gets to look miffed at Wayne, her former childhood sweetheart, but doesn't really do much more than sit around waiting for the sequel.

Yes, it all goes a bit zany at the end with the big finale involving the speeding train, the giant microwave thingy, the city water supply and the local insane asylum.

But this still succeeds as a thinking fan's comic book movie, because by bringing the Caped Crusader down to earth, it's elevated the legend all over again.

Cast: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Katie Holmes, Morgan Fox, Cillian Murphy
Director: Christopher Nolan
Rating: M (medium level violence)
Running time: 134 mins
Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley