Ok … I have finally seen Batman Begins.

 

Wow.

 

This is a fantastic movie. The story is great and the themes are wonderful dealing realistically not just with black and white but with the gray areas of justice, vengeance, evil, social responsibility, calling, courage etc. Very well done and easily up there with Spider-man as far as superhero movies go. Certainly it ranks right up there with some of the better films made.

 

One of the things the movie does incredibly well is bring out the original tone of the comicbooks and later graphic novels. This is not a comedian Batman where you keep expecting the graphical overlay of POW and BIF and BAM with every punch. No, this is the true Dark Knight in all his depth and broken splendour. A very human character and the most believable of the superheros.

 

I was happy to see that the violence was suprisingly non-gory and realistic. Batman gets hurt. There are physical consequences to the violence. I could not detect any vulgarity, nudity or other objectionable content.

 

Some great lines in the film:

 

To Bruce Wayne – "Your compassion is something your enemies will not share."

Wayne in response – "That’s what makes it so important."

 

As a child when Bruce would get hurt his father would ask him –

 

"Why do we fall?"

 

He would tell Bruce – "So that we might better learn to pick ourselves up."

 

The Biblical allusions are wonderful and make the movie ideal to watch in a small group setting. At the end of the month I am going to show the movie to our Jr. & Sr. Youth and young adults on our monthly movie night. After the movie I will give away a Bible study written by Christianity Today about the movie. We’ll have a little discussion too.