Don't believe the hype guys, I'm afraid that you may be disappointed with this one. If you're a Batman aficionado then I'm pretty sure that you'll be happy with this but if like me you aren't especially interested in the super-hero genre and just want to watch a good film you'd do best to opt for something else.

The plot starts well enough, it seems as if Nolan is trying to inject some realism into the Batman character but soon enough you see the futility in those attempts and by the end it's clear that Nolan has given up on his original designs, FACT: you can't make a serious movie out of comic book characters, on the evidence of this movie at least this would seem to be true.

Christian Bale turns in a decent performance but his best scenes are those as Bruce Wayne the playboy, they evoked aspects of his performance from American Psycho and were a joy to watch (although perhaps not for the reasons intended). As Batman he was competent but never exciting, I would say that he was better than Clooney and Keaton but perhaps just behind Kilmer overall.

The direction was interesting in parts and was certainly superior to the other Batman films (namely Burton and Schumacher's). However we never really saw Nolan at his best as it felt as if he was constrained by the source material at hand.

Overall an average film, not good, not bad, just average. Watch if you're short on options.