BATMAN BEGINS

Batman Begins is a very good film. But not a great film. Interesting. Not exciting, but lots of explosions. Fun for the whole family. Christian Bale is fine as Batman. Katie Holmes is fine as the girl he lusts after chastely.

There's a curious morality in films about who you are allowed to kill (and when) and still be the most moral person on earth. (I think there's a PhD thesis in that for somebody.) Generally speaking, you can kill people with a name only at the end of the movie (and only in certain ways under certain conditions) after they have been really bad. Even if they are very bad, you can not kill them at the beginning. People-without-a-name-who-are-assumed-to-be-employed-by-the-bad-guy can be killed at any time.

Bale appeared in Spielberg's Empire of the Sun when he was 13. He was in American Psycho and Little Women. His second time in a film about Pocahontas, he will be John Rolfe in Terrence Malick's version of the story, The New World. (John Rolfe married Pocahontas and also founded the tobacco industry.) Bale will reprise the role of Batman in the sequel to Batman Begins.

Holmes appeared on the cover of every entertainment magazine on Earth, since hooking up with Tom Cruise.

The supporting cast is very fine (the good guys and the villains both), especially Michael Caine -- as the man-friday who cares for Bruce Wayne as a boy and then as a man; Liam Neeson; Rutger Hauer; and, in the guy-who-knows-everything role, Morgan Freeman.