Director Christopher Nolan explores the origins of the Batman legend: When his parents are murdered, heartbroken and angry, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) travels to the far East seeking ways to fight crime and injustice. He returns to Gotham City and becomes the infamous masked and mysterious crusader. Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. [2:14]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - Two women wearing short dresses sit in a sports car (one on the other's lap). Women at a party wear evening gowns that are low-cut and reveal cleavage, bare shoulders and backs. A man wakes up with sheets covering him, he gets out of bed and we see him bare-chested.
► A man and a woman kiss twice.
► Two women and a man get into a fountain in a restaurant and the manager asks them to leave because the women "do not have swimwear" (we see the women wrapped in robes later; they were clothed when they went in the fountain).

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - A man holds a gun on another man in an alley, he shoots the man and then his wife who's with him and leaves them to die while their young son looks on and weeps over them (we see blood on the dead man's shirt).
► A man hides a gun in his belt and plans to kill another man: he approaches him in a crowded court building, but another person walks toward the criminal and shoots him (he falls to the floor dead). A man is shot in the back.
► A man and Batman fight in a speeding train: they punch and kick each other, one holds the other by the throat, the train approaches a part of the track that has been blown away and it crashes to the street below with a man inside (we are lead to believe that the man died).
► A man holds a sword over a man's neck in order to execute him, but instead he ignites hay that's close by, which causes a fire that begins to burn the building; the man then uses his sword to fight with another man who also has a sword, as the building explodes and the two men are thrown back -- a burning beam lands on one man killing him (we see blood on his mouth). The other man finds another man who's unconscious, and he carries him out of the burning building. An explosion knocks the two men down a slippery slope, one man catches the other as he falls over the side and pulls him back up.
► When people are sprayed with a hallucinogenic mist they see gruesome things: a man wearing a burlap mask looks like he is covered with wriggling maggots, his voice sounds very deep, another man wearing a black mask looks demonic and his eyes and mouth ooze black tar-looking goo, and others repeat the word "scarecrow." Armed men surround a woman having a hallucinogenic episode, Batman swoops in, one man shoots another man in the foot, and Batman beats the other man, takes one man away, holds him, sprays him with a hallucinogenic mist and questions him. People hallucinate and see Batman, with red glowing eyes and mouth, flying above. A man sprays a hallucinogenic mist into a room, and another man screams and appears to be terrified. A woman is sprayed with a hallucinogenic mist, she screams and we hear that she was doused with a concentrated dose.
► A man in prison is punched hard in the face twice, he head-butts the man who punched him, and many other men join in the fight; he proceeds to punch, kick and flip them all until they lie on the ground squirming, and the man is taken away by prison guards and thrown into a dark cell.
► Many men with swords surround a man during training: the man in the middle tries to locate his trainer among the barricade of men, and fights on and off with him using swords. During one exchange, one man is cut on the arm (we see blood on his skin), one man slashes two other men on the arm, and one man is held with a sword to his throat while another is held with a sword to the back of his neck.
► Manhole covers pop off streets when water is vaporized, a mist fills the air, and people scream and panic when they begin to hallucinate: a man sees boys who look like zombies (their eyes are white and their skin ashen), we hear screaming, we see people attacking each other, one man holds another man by the head and squeezes (we hear crunching), and a boy sees a horse's eyes glowing red and it blows flames from its nostrils.
► A man is snared by the foot, pulled high into the air, dropped back down toward the street, pulled back up again and held by the hair, and then he's dropped but stopped just before hitting the street.
► Batman is sprayed with a mist that causes him to hallucinate, he is set on fire, he jumps out a window, lands on the roof of a car below, and he rolls onto the street and staggers away. Two men hold a man, another punches him in the face (we see blood on his mouth), and they throw him into a street.
► On a dark loading dock we hear a loud moan, two men go to investigate, Batman drops on them from above, other men shoot at him, and another man is swooped up by Batman; many others are beaten up (we see them lying on the ground twisted and groaning), and another man is pulled out through the glass roof of a limousine, he is head butted twice and taken away into the air.
► Two men fight with swords, while standing on ice, and one drops his sword and they fight with punches; one is knocked down, then the other one is knocked down and he breaks a hole through the ice causing the other man to fall through (we see him shivering but OK later). Two men fight with swords: a man stands on pillars and is swatted by other men standing around him, and he tries to avoid the strikes without falling off.
► A man enters a building at the top of a frozen mountain, he is surrounded by men with guns, one man punches him, and then kicks him; the man tries to fight back swinging his arms, but he's punched and kicked and we see blood on his nose as he lies nearly unconscious on the floor.
► Batman is surrounded and attacked by many people in a dark street: he begins to succumb to their numbers and falls down, but then he pulls himself out and up into the air. A man holds a weapon (it's not clear what it is) to another man's neck: the threatened man chases him with a gun, the man runs along a rooftop, jumps, slips down drain pipes and slams into a wall.
► A man fights two men: the house they are in is set on fire by other men, he is knocked to the floor and pinned under a burning beam, and another man enters and hits one of the attackers with a golf club; the building crumbles, and two men escape into a cave as a large explosion blows flames behind them.
► A man is shoved into a mirror, and another man is punched. A woman slaps a man in the face twice, and a man is punched twice. A woman tasers a man on a horse who's threatening her, and a woman is threatened by two men on a dark subway platform and she draws a taser and shoots it at someone else lurking in the shadows. A man is thrown out of a moving truck and he falls on the roadway.
► A boy falls into a deep well, he hears rumbling and screeching coming from inside a dark cave and he is swarmed by bats. A boy, and later a man, have nightmares about being swarmed by screeching bats. A man lowers himself into a well, he walks through a dark cave, he finds a bat breeding ground, and he is swarmed by many screeching bats. Many bats swarm many police officers as they rush into a building with their guns drawn -- the bats crash through the windows. One man opens a large box, and he is swarmed by bats causing him to fall to the floor (it's not clear whether he's hallucinating or not). The introductory credits are accompanied by many swarming bats in a dark sky.
► Batman holds onto a cable that is attached to a speeding train, he is dragged along, crashes into poles and signs as the train speeds toward a building. A man climbs a very steep and frozen mountainside while the wind is blowing; he is visibly exhausted and cold when he reaches the top. A boy is lifted out of a well by a man on a rope and carried into a house (he has broken his leg).
► A heavily armored, tank-like vehicle drives over a police car, speeds away and is chased by many other police cars: the vehicle drives into a multi-floor parking garage, it fires a weapon that blows a hole in a wall, it speeds up and jumps off the roof and onto a neighboring rooftop and then across several more rooftops while police cars crash into barricades and flip over; a helicopter also chases the vehicle, which crashes through a wall.
► A man is strapped to a searchlight after being beaten. A man is strapped into a straitjacket. We see a man strapped into a chair in a psychiatric hospital.
► We hear a man and a woman arguing bitterly. A man has a badly bruised arm. People gather and mourn at a funeral. We see people living underneath a city's streets and hear about an ongoing economic depression, and a man steals vegetables from a street market; we also see the conditions of a prison where men are covered in filth and served disgusting looking food. A man urinates (we hear a trickle).
► Many inmates of a psychiatric hospital are released and we see them prowling the streets. A woman and a boy are surrounded by escaped inmates, one threatens them with a knife, and the boy and the woman are swooped by Batman into the air and taken to safety. Police are shown tackling and arresting escaped psychiatric prisoners in the streets, as other people run in panic.
► We hear that a man "butchers people for the mob," and we hear about a weapon that can vaporize a huge water supply at a moment's notice in order to cripple an enemy during warfare.

LANGUAGE 3 - 1 scatological term, 1 anatomical term, 12 mild obscenities, 1 religious profanity, 1 religious exclamation.

SUBSTANCE USE - People inhale a mist that makes them hallucinate and see horrible things. A man inhales a smoke given off from a burning flower that causes him to hallucinate. People drink alcohol at a party, two men drink champagne, and two men drink alcohol in another scene.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Justice, death of parents, revenge, overcoming fear, manipulating people's fears, guilt, rage, compassion, corruption, insanity, experimentation on convicts, legacy, weapons of mass destruction, idealism, disappointment, vigilantism, apathy, desperation, the Underground Railroad, slavery.

MESSAGE - Rage can cloud our judgment and we fear what we do not understand.