At last!

A good movie! Batman Begins rocks. Fairly clever writing and dialogue, good acting, good action. Christian Bayle is hot. This Batman bucks the traditional style set by Tim Burton and goes for a more realistic feel instead of campy comic book style, which really helps to throw off the bad taste in my mouth from the last few Batman movies. The psychology and origins of Batman are developed and revealed intelligently, and constitute the majority of the movie. The final conflict in the end is fun, but the concept behind it is Really Stupid. **spoiler warning**

Apparently, when every society reaches a peak of decadence and decay, a secret society known as.. drum roll.. the Shadow Society (!) comes along and destroys said culture. The fall of Rome? The SS. Apparently Gotham has reached the point where the death of every citizen serves a greater good than letting the government and police be run by corrupt officials. Said society, after this amazing value judgment, proceeds to spend the next century infilitrating the political infrastructure of Gotham to effect said jugment. After a precipitous stock market crash, their first attempt is foiled by none other than Daddy Wayne. We all know what happens to him. So who will stop their latest attempt? The Bat Man! This is one of the silliest plot threads I've ever seen. A secret society devoted to fighting evil and corruption goes about destroying entire societies. Right. When they could just as easily kill/remove/reform the people who are contributing to decay of the city, given their near limitless amount of time and resources. It's kind of sad that the rest of the movie seems to well thought-out, and then to have this festering lump of dog shit sitting in the proverbial plot corner.