DON'T BE SCARED

An underacted comic book film? Batman Begins is structured, at least for a while, around subtle, understated performances - Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Linus Roache in a classy turn like Robert Burke with an imaginable interior. Roache's pleasant performance is more important than his screen time might suggest; as Thomas Wayne, his character must be of sufficient stuff that it must always show in young Bruce as he becomes himself. Bale's persona as Batman must always answer to the standard set by the elder Wayne - Batman himself is an ongoing attempt to answer the loss of the father, and if we are too easily tempted to extend that to an archetypal concept, we would do well to remember the individual case, not losing sight of Bruce Wayne's actions germinating always in his father.

If Batman prowls the night because his father was killed (much more the position of Batman Begins than any maternal concerns), it helps the sympathy value of his case if the father in question is an honorable, classy one, whose too brief time with young Bruce was sufficient to instill him with the solid ethical base required to guide him through his life, rather than the somewhat more cynical assertion that he creeps through the night doling out discipline because his father disappeared from the picture at an important age, leaving him only the most outlandish method of creating the discipline he needed from ages twelve through eighteen: by projecting guilt (his own, at his father's death) onto common thugs and low-lifes, then punishing appropriately. Batman doesn't take life; this was not a punishment his father would have likely considered appropriate. He only seeks to create a civil, caring, well-behaved city-family like the one he lost.

While these subtexts have always been there for the looking in Batman's comic-book world, they tend to be passed over, meaningless as they are. Batman as a series has drawn many of its strongest moments from the idea of discrediting them, from Batman exalting the higher functions: he eschews guns, avoids killing, utilizes gadgets and inventions, hones his mind to become The World's Greatest Detective, a title bestowed upon him for a long span. It's all tied together - probably not much of a stretch to wonder if some of that widespread philanthropic donation isn't compensation for an extensively guilty conscience, let alone for the damage caused to Gotham by his nightly adventures - but his emphasis on mental agility, even as he must by necessity practice its physical counterpart against the heat-packing criminal element, is his commitment to overpowering those dirtier psychological secrets.

To the film's credit, this 65-year, thousands-of-issues struggle is recapitulated in Batman Begins. The conflict is set up in the origin story, and while Batman Begins has the benefit of telling the story itself, superhero films fail if they stray too far; the origin must be visible from any point along the line, and Batman & Robin simply doesn't offer that connection. Batman Begins does, playing up the counterpoint to Batman's intellectual resolve, for even as he strives to overcome the guilt of his parents' death, seeking to serve Gotham out of superego morality rather than compensatory, low revenge, it reminds him and the viewer that a more visceral psychological factor is at work: when Batman Begins is about fear, it is at its...

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Topics: movies