Moral ambiguity is a common theme in movies today, and Batman Begins manages to stretch the limits without breaking them. I would say that the primary theme of the movie is how to react when faced with evil. It’s not enough to just to have a good heart… you have to stand and face the enemy. The movie states that pretty clearly: when Bruce Wayne tells his love interest (played by Katie Holmes) that he’s still the same man deep down inside, she tells him that a man is “defined by what he does, not what’s inside.” That sounds a lot to me like “faith without works is dead.” But what to do? Wayne can’t bring himself to follow the path of his father, who is portrayed as a big-hearted philanthropist, the kind that every wealthy Christian dreams of being. After seeing his father die pointlessly and his works dismantled by corruption, Wayne decides that he must battle injustice. But how far is he justified in going? This is a poignant question today, especially as our country struggles with the question of whether our action in Iraq was morally justified. I once heard a commentary by someone saying that he did not want a true Christian in the White House, because a peacemaker wouldn’t defend us against our enemies. How can a peacemaker face evil, when tactics such as passive resistance don’t seem to work?

Throw into this mix the dazzling performance by Liam Neeson, who favors the course of taking up arms against evil. He delivers my favorite line in the movie: “Criminals thrive on the indulgences of society’s understanding.” As a Christian, it’s an alarming statement to hear, because it casts doubt on the non-aggression that Jesus taught. Given Bruce Wayne’s transformation into the crime-fighting Batman, the movie again seems to state its stance pretty clearly: you need to overpower evil with good. But in the act of overpowering, how to you avoid acting contrary to the teachings of Jesus? How do you avoid becoming evil yourself?

The movie rescues itself from the abyss when Bruce Wayne declares at a pivotal moment, “I will not be this man’s executioner.” I believe this to be a very Christian response. In essence, when attempting to overpower evil, you have to remain humble before God. Life and death are in God’s hands, not ours. The movie is pretty true to this theme. Make no mistake… it is a very violent movie. But unlike most movies, the violence comes from director Christopher Nolan’s (known for Memento) special talent for making striking, terrifying images through visual, audile, and situational tricks. But for all the terrifying imagery, the movie is refreshingly free of gruesome death. We can assume that people die in some of the movie’s burning buildings and crashing vehicles, but there are no impalings, bodies riddled with bullets, severed limbs, or spurting blood. We also can’t say that the movie totally frees itself of moral ambiguity. Consider the movie’s climax, in which Batman decides whether to kill his nemesis. Whether he responds rightly or wrongly is largely a matter of your point of view: one perspective would say that, yes, he did take the villain’s life into his own hands. The other would say that he simply let the villain suffer the consequences of his own actions. What do you think? See the movie, and decide for yourself. What do I think? I think I had a great time.

June 16, 2005