I never figured Batman for a hair-puller.

Warner Bros. has a delicate treasure on its hands with its stable of DC Comics superheroes, especially the iconic Batman and Superman characters. They make great and terrible movie fodder. Do it right and you’ve got a film classic. Screw it up and legions of uber-fans will rip you to shreds while mainstream audiences simply yawn and move on. So it took some guts to hand over the beloved Batman to Christopher Nolan, a director whose past efforts (Memento, Insomnia) leaned more towards the small, quirky and suspenseful than the big-budget and effects-laden.

Fortune favors the brave. Batman Begins is nothing short of the best super-hero movie I’ve ever seen. As the title implies, it explains why and how a wealthy young man named Bruce Wayne comes to spend his nights prowling the streets of Gotham City with a swirling cape and an arsenal of high-tech gadgetry.

The why is pretty well known: as a child, Bruce witnessed the murder of his parents, an event that left him with a thirst for justice, or is it vengeance? As for the how, the movie takes us along as Bruce (Christian Bale) mingles with the criminal element in a brutal Asian prison, then learns the way of the Ninja from mysterious mentor Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). Ducard is part of the League of Shadows, a vigilante group led by the even more mysterious Ra's al Ghul (Ken Watanabe).

Unwilling to go to the League’s extremes, Bruce returns to Gotham to fight crime in his own way. His way involves dressing up as a giant bat, and really, whose wouldn’t? He also hooks up with Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), an inventor who has been banished to the dungeons of Wayne Enterprises despite the fact that he cooks up nifty stuff like near-indestructible body armor and a really macho car, both of which look good in black.

"Damn, I knew I should have sprung for the water-proof cowl."

Batman Begins sucked me in from its very first flashback-heavy scenes. Nolan and his co-writer David Goyer get it all right, from their intense, broody protagonist to the heart-pounding action scenes to a few much-needed moments of humor. Bruce’s evolution into Batman is given the time it deserves as he grows from a fearful child to an angry young man into someone who’s ready to be a hero. You’ll have to deal with some delayed gratification if you’re only there for the action, but all the attention to his back story turns Bruce/Batman into a far more real, more affecting character than he’s ever been before onscreen.

Visually, Nolan trades in the stylized, art deco look of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher movies for a more gritty, blighted Gotham City. I like the visual flourishes of the earlier films, but the urban decay works too, and makes the story seem more realistic and harrowing.

Nolan also displays a sharp eye for casting. Bale hits all the right notes in exploring the character’s duality. His Bruce is a brooding, pensive obsessive, his Batman a scowling, gravel-voiced menace. You can see why criminals are afraid of him; he’s chilling.

Liam Neeson is always a favorite and he doesn’t disappoint here. He owns his scenes. And it’s hard to go wrong with reliable favorites like Morgan Freeman as the wily inventor, Michael Caine as Bruce’s loyal butler Alfred and Gary Oldman playing – surprise! – not a villain but Jim Gordon, one of Gotham’s few honest cops. They’re all terrific and seem to be having a blast. Relative newcomer Cillian Murphy is also good as a demented psychologist. The only misstep is Katie Holmes as the assistant district attorney and Bruce’s childhood sweetheart. I usually like Holmes, but she’s a little young for the part and doesn’t have the toughness it requires.

With its angsty characters and existential crises, Batman Begins scores as a human drama, but it is still a superhero movie and the action scenes are exhilarating. Batman is back and I for one am already looking forward to the sequel.  

Gorilla Pants rating: 4 out of 4 bananas