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It's nice to know that even a studio as clueless as Warner Bros can, once in a while, make a movie about something cool that it has the rights to without raping it and then shitting all over it. This flick rocks.

After the homosexual light parade some would call "Batman & Robin," things didn't look hopeful for the great Dark Knight, but Christopher Nolan and David Goyer luckily found a way besides sucking good dick to get their vision made, and it worked. Batman no longer has to be associated with nipples and bad guys with hot pink hair, not to mention shitty movies. The cast, just as much responsible for this solid tale's victory, features Christian Bale as the most appropriate Bruce Wayne to date, Katie Holmes as a love interest that isn't a semi-retarded bitch (ahem, paging Kirsten Dunst, we need you to go take a self defense class and stop screaming for Tobey Maguire to solve all your issues), Liam Neeson as the pimp Qui Gon could have been, Gary Oldman as ol' Sergeant Gordon, Tom Wilkinson as a great cross between comic and convincing villain, Michael Cane as the trusty Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and... color me retarded, I can't remember the guy's name right now, but man oh man is the Scarecrow a fantastic bad guy here. The guy from "28 Days Later." Whatever. Kudos.

What we center on here is the creation of a legend, and how a man with no more than proper training in ninjitsu uses his fortune to become one while keeping quiet about it, sometimes at the cost of his family name. While Batman is almost awkward to us at first, since we're so involved with Christian Bale as Bruce for so long, he becomes more and more of a natural presence at the same time Bruce likely feels more and more at home in the costume, which is probably what they wanted. It's not as if he can just put on the threads and get his Batman voice perfect on the first night, sounding like a nightmare can take practice.

The eeriest part of this flick is that Gotham looks real. While it's all been said that they took from major existing cities for the design of this spread, watching the Scarecrow's poisonous gas leak out into the streets of a ghetto-ish island that resembles some parts of Hong Kong just adds to the feel they were going for, that this could happen in our world, and (darn) it works. The League of Shadows, an organization that dates back a thousand years and was responsible for all major societal declines as part of its oath to the world to benefit good by going out and wrecking shit when one society's getting too greedy? Okay, I could buy that! Why not? Sounds like Al Qaeda with a cooler leader! A vigilante in a costume? Why not? Damn, they got me.

I'd go into more detail, but you should see it. Really. Even if you don't like the comic books, or never bothered to read one. This is just a plain, well-made flick with cool action that actually goes right for the gut instead of trying to please with overdone special effects. It's the redeeming flick of the summer after "Episode 3" officially sodomized Darth Vader in George Lucas' private prison shower. Batman didn't get screwed here. He's a badass again. And his movie's cool too, with some room for a few sequels we may be actually able to handle if this team here sticks together.

(five bongs)

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