The story opens with a dream sequence where Bruce is playing, as a child, in their gigantic garden with Rachel Dawes, as he for the first time encounters bats through a traumatic experience.  When Bruce wakes up he is a captive of an Asian prison, seemingly Chinese, but this is not confirmed.  He is in prison due to his personal journey to gain wisdom about the nature of evil.  It also appears that he has enemies whereever he wanders, as convicts are willing to end his life whenever opportunity presents itself.  As a consequence, the prison guards throw him into solitary confinement where a shadowy man, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), offers him the opportunity to fight evil in a more productive manner.  However, Bruce must follow the instructions of Ducard and undergo rigorous training where he must face his personal fears.

Batman Begins opens with a fragmented storyline, which helps induce the confusion that Bruce might be feeling while trying to understand himself and how he should approach evil.  In this beginning, Bruce's past history runs before the audience's eyes through a number of interjecting flashbacks that present how he got to the situation where he gains the skills and wisdom necessary to battle evil.  Much of his wisdom and skill comes from intense training in ninjutsu and other martial arts while he is aptly ingesting all of the physical, spiritual, and philosophical parts of his training.  Intermittently throughout the training, scenes from his past emerge to increase an understanding of why he desires to combat evil.  The root of his desire stems from a harrowing childhood memory where his mother and father were brutally gunned down in his presence after having left an opera performance early due to fear experienced during the opera.

The scene leading up to the murder of his parents continues to display director Christopher Nolan's attention for detail, as he also plays with the analogous notion that fear can prevent people from fulfilling their destinies.  The scene also illustrates the internalized guilt that Bruce possesses due to his fears that frequently haunt his dreams with his personal nightmarish nemesis – the bat.  However, Ducard teaches him that in order to fully be prepared to face his destiny he must conquer over his own fears.  This lengthy beginning is essential in order for the audience to build a complete understanding of Bruce's persona, as he struggles to understand himself within a diverse and unjust world.  Nonetheless, Nolan accomplishes to keep the audience's attention with his hypnotic storytelling that has splashes of wit and insightfulness.

Eventually, Bruce finishes his education with Ducard, but finds himself at a crossroads where his personal philosophy opposes Ducard's organizations.  This leads him to take his own path, a narrow path, where he must struggle to be on the right side of justice.  In addition, when he returns home to Gotham City he discovers that he has been declared dead, as he has been gone for more than seven years.  Through the help of his family butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), he returns home to begin work in a small department of his company that is run by Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) from where he finds several of his fantastic Batman toys while he is trying to find a fitting symbol for his new alter ego.  After much thought, Bruce settles for the name – Batman.

During Bruce's long absence from Gotham City, the city has disintegrated from rampant crime while corruption is reaching its peak.  The man behind the scenes seems to be the mobster Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) who has a finger in everything within the city, but he is also cooperating with Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), a psychiatrist, that gets off all of Falcone's thugs with the plea of insanity.  The police do not do much, as most of them are in the pocket of Falcone.  One of the few that seems to pursue the criminals is the attorney Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), but without much luck.  Amidst this vile corruption Batman begins to restore peace and order within the city with his tough approach.  However, there seems to be something much bigger brewing underneath the surface of the city and Batman might be what Gotham City needs to save them.

Batman Begins provides an authentic image of Batman's true dark character, as he struggles with what is right and wrong.  Through this personal struggle of Batman, Nolan does a wonderful job in depicting a genuine society where things are not black and white, as he brings the film into the gray zone where nothing is completely clear.  This ambiguousness is vital, as it also heavily deals with the emotion fear.  Fear is crucial for survival as people can sense dangers when facing fears, but if neglected it could lead to worse sorrow.  The camerawork and the darkness in the film enhances the element of fear in a brilliant manner.  There is a scene where the bats seem to merge with Batman, which symbolically produces the notion that fear is an essential part of our own existence and cannot be neglected.  When the darkness of the viewing room goes into hiding from the light and the end credits fade away Batman Begins continues to expand beyond any of its predecessors with a thoughtful and innovative cinematic experience not soon forgotten.

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