Topping. Go see it.

Batman Begins: A film which attempts to answer the age-old question “Just how believably serious is it possible to make old-school, underpants-atop-tights superhero Batman while still keeping him Batman?”

And the answer seems to be “holy expunged clichés, Batman, pretty darn believably serious.”

Not that it’s a po-faced or pretentious film. It is however, a million miles from the camp disaster area of Batman And Robin, for which a million bat-fans breath a collective bat-sigh. Of course, he’s still a man who dresses as a giant flying rodent, but most of the elements and paraphanalia are introduced and explained and fit in and make sense. (Bruce Wayne is afraid of bats, so he uses bats to make criminals afraid of him, for example.) And there are lots of bats in the film, which is rather satisfying.

Not totally realistic. The car chase bit especially was very daft-action-movie: Batman is careering over the road and blowing holes in things and knocking police cars over to such an extent that it’s only a good thing that people don’t get killed in car crashes in the movies. Otherwise it would make Batman a callous and brutal highway hit-and-run killer. (Also if your girlfriend has just been given some deadly, fear-inducing hallucinagen, I’d have though that the last thing you want to do is drive at breakneck speed over precarious rooftops.) And some of the dialogue is occasionally a bit creaky. However the calibre of acting is fantastic, and you’d hardly notice the odd bit of laboured scripting.

And it’s got Rutger Hauer in it.

And Michael Caine is brilliant.

Basically a huge breath of fresh air after the last two, shit Batman films. And stonking good fun to boot.