"Batman has a twisted and repressed relationship with Holmes' Rachel (read: Peter Parker and Mary Jane). The idea is frustratingly underdeveloped, but then, he is Batman; he's not going to go on Oprah to profess his love."

"The idea that Batman has a dark side has had mixed success at the box office. Michael Keaton seemed disoriented and sad, batty rather than dark. The preening Val Kilmer perfected an air of preoccupation, but you suspected it was merely with himself. I spent most of Batman Foreverworried that any moment Kilmer would stop proceedings to ask "Does my bum look big in this?" And George Clooney? Well, George Clooney looked like a man who'd turned up in fancy dress to the wrong house. The latest model, Christian Bale, offers some hope. We've already seen him as a pale screw-up in Velvet Goldmine and considerably more screwed up in American Psycho."

"But Nolan's film gives us an interesting new twist. After 13 years in the joint, this mugger is up for a parole court hearing, proposing to offer inside information that could convict Gotham's biggest villain Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). It turns into a Jack Ruby-style bloody fiasco; Bruce flees abroad to find himself and brood on who the real bad guys are, and winds up thrown in jail in China where he encounters a mysterious sect of righteous assassins, led by Liam Neeson, who propose to instruct him in the vocation of the masked avenger. This is the movie's big influence: a wholesale borrowing from the new wave of action movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Batman's big credibility gap has always been that he is the superhero without superpowers. Nolan's film imports the concept of Asian martial arts to bolster Batman's credentials. Back home, the young corporate princeling works on his new persona, with the help of his butler and confidant Alfred, amiably played by Michael Caine. As Batman, Bale does look quite creepy, especially close up, his mouth and chin transformed into something bestial - with a growling voice that drops an octave when in character. His batmobile isn't the sleek black convertible of old but a chunkier Humvee-ish ride, more suitable for paranoid urban combat and originally designed for the military by the Wayne group's tech maestro (played by Morgan Freeman). Bale brings to this some of his American Psycho performance, a rich loner compulsively assuming a new identity to purge his self-loathing, and indeed ambiguous loathing of a father who failed to stand up for himself. Certainly, the muddy colours of Nolan's visual palette make everything look appropriately dark - and dark is what so many movies nowadays claim to be, perhaps confusing darkness with factor, however, by casting Cillian Murphy as an unprincipled psychiatrist who specialises depth. (I am tempted to say: you want dark? Try the daylit nightmares of Neil LaBute or Michael Haneke.) Nolan certainly intensifies his own darkness-visible in getting obvious villains off on insanity charges, and is involved in a plot to use a fear-inducing poison gas. Murphy, with his uniquely sinister good looks and sensuous, predatory mouth, is the scariest actor I know."

"In this retelling of the story, Bale's Bruce Wayne is the son of an idealistic American billionaire, an FDR-style patrician liberal who withdrew from the day-to-day running of the family corporation to practise medicine and donate vast sums to establishing a proper public transportation system for Gotham: a gleaming new monorail. As a child, Bruce remembers riding on this train with his parents, instead of in a limo, but Nolan neatly contrives that it is this monorail which, in the denatured and decadent city of Wayne's adulthood, is the scene of Gotham's operatic Armageddon."

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."

"[slurring] Everyone? Everybody? I want to thank you all for coming here tonight and drinking all of my booze. No, really. That's the thing about being a Wayne: that you're never short of a few freeloaders like yourselves to fill up your mansion with. So here's to you people. Thank you. [takes a drink] Um, I'm not finished. To all you phonies, you two-faced friends, you sycophantic suck-ups who smile through your teeth at me: please leave me in peace. Please go! Stop smiling. It's not a joke. Please leave. The party's over. Get out. [party guests leave, revealing Ra's al Ghul's men]"

"They told me there was nothing out there, nothing to fear. But the night my parents were murdered I caught a glimpse of something. I've looked for it ever since. I went around the world, searched in all the shadows. And there is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge... Me."

"Chinese Victim of Bullet Tooth Tony: [after shooting Tony several times without him dying] I shoot you, you go down!"

"Mike Reid – Doug "the Head" Denovitz"

"Benicio Del Toro – Franky Four Fingers"

"Vinnie Jones – Bullet Tooth Tony"

"Lennie James – Sol"

"Robbie Gee – Vincent"

"Rade Serbedzija – Boris "the Blade" Yurinov (as Rade Serbedgia)"

"Dennis Farina – Abraham "Cousin Avi" Denovitz"

"Brad Pitt – Mickey O'Neil"

"Alan Ford – Brick Top Polford"

"Stephen Graham – Tommy"

"Jason Statham – Turkish"

"Stealing stones is hazardous."

"Now you see it, now you don't!"

"Stealin' Stones and Breakin' Bones"

"Various characters: [regarding Boris the Blade] Sneaky fuckin' Russian"

"Sol: [Vinny tries to open the outer door at the bookies] It won't open because it's a security door!"

"Franky Four Fingers: So the Biblical scholars mistranslated the Hebrew word for "young woman" into the Greek word for "virgin". It was an easy mistake to make, since there is only a subtle difference in the spelling. But it was the "virgin" that caught people's attention. It's not every day a virgin conceives and bears a son. So you keep that for a couple of hundred years, and the next thing you know, you have the Holy Catholic Church. Oy vey."

"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by a 'orrible cunt: me."

"Listen here, you fucking fringe. If I throw a dog a bone, I don't want to know if it tastes good or not. You stop me again whilst I'm talking, and I'll cut your fucking Jacobs off."

"Goody gumdrops. Get us a cup of tea, will you, Errol?"

"[To Turkish] You are on thin fucking ice, my pedigree chums, and I shall be under it when it breaks! Now, fuck off."

"I don't care if he's Muhammad "I'm-hard" Bruce Lee, you can't change fighters!"

"In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary … come again?"

"Now … we are fucked."

"Tommy persuaded me to keep the dog; I eventually agreed, as long as he took it to a vet. Couldn't stand that squeaking anymore. The vet found a squeaky toy, an undigested shoe, and an eighty-six carat diamond lodged in the dog's stomach. Lot can happen in a week. [The dog barks] Still didn't shut it up, though."

"[Voiceover] Ever crossed the road and looked the wrong way? And hey presto, a car's nearly on you, so what do you do? You freeze. And your life doesn't flash before your eyes, 'cause you're too fucking scared to think – you just freeze, and pull a stupid face. The pikey didn't – why? Because he had plans on running the car over. It had previously occurred to me that the pikey had taken the demise of his mother rather lightly. For every action, there is a reaction. And a pikey reaction … is quite a fucking thing."

"You show me how to control a wild fucking gypsy, and I'll show you how to control an unhinged, pig-feeding gangster."

"[Voiceover] Boris "the Blade", or Boris "the Bullet Dodger". As bent as the Soviet sickle, and as hard as the hammer that crosses it. Apparently, it's just impossible to kill the bastard."

"Now, I know he looks like a fat fucker … well, he is a fat fucker … but he's dirty and he's dangerous."

"That's Doug the Head. Everybody knows Doug the Head. If it's stones and it's stolen, he's the man to speak to. Pretends he's Jewish. Wishes he was Jewish. Even tells his family they're Jewish, but he's about as Jewish as he is a fucking monkey. He thinks it's good for business. And in the diamond business, it is good for business."

"Hurry up, Tommy, before zee Germans get here."

"[Voiceover] This is Tommy. He tells people he's named after a gun, but I know he's named after a famous 19th century ballet dancer."

"Not many people are named after a plane crash."

"Boris "the Blade" Yurinov: [referring to the gun he sold Tommy] Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn't work … you can always hit them with it."

"Boris "the Blade" Yurinov: You can keep the 10 large, along with the body. But if I see you again – you motherfuckers! – well, look at him. [points to Franky Four Finger's corpse]"

"Boris "the Blade" Yurinov: Drop the gun, fat boy."

"[To Doug the Head] Shut up, and sit down you big, bald, fuck!"

"[When asked by the Customs agent at the American airport if he has anything to declare] Yeah, don't go to England!"

"[To his colleague] Yes, London. You know, fish, chips, cup o' tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fuckin' Poppins … London!"

"[After Rosebud has been badly injured in capturing Boris] First we get the stone, bubi, then we'll get you to a doctor. And not just any doctor, boychik, I'm gonna get you to a nice Jewish doctor. [To Tony] Find my friend a nice Jewish doctor!"

"I'm getting heartburn. Tony, do something terrible."

"Russians. Anti-semite cossack sluts."