Its been 16 years since Tim Burton resurrected Batman with a movie that generated three sequels, concluding with Batman & Robin in 1997. British director, Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) now gets his chance to re-create the Dark Knight for the 21st century.
In Batman Begins, Nolan returns to the origins of the legend in which industrial heir, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) emerges as a mighty force for good. After witnessing his parents murder, Wayne becomes obsessed with revenge, but fate intervenes when he gets the opportunity to avenge their deaths. Disillusioned, he flees to the East where he seeks counsel from a ninja cult leader known as Ras Al-Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and finds the means to fight injustice and those who prey on the fearful.
When Wayne returns home to Gotham City, it is in decay and organised crime and other dangerous individuals have overrun it. With the help of an old family ally, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Wayne emerges as his alter-ego, the masked crusader, Batman, whose strength, intellect and high tech deceptions allow him to combat the forces of evil represented by such individuals as mafia don, Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and the twisted drug dealer, Dr Jonathan Crane, aka The Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy).