Christopher Nolan screened Blade Runner for the crew before filming Batman Begins, to show them what they were going for visually, which makes sense with the emphasis on the city design in Begins. For Dark Knight, he showed them Heat (obviously).

I think the first half of Batman Begins is great, but once the actual batman storyline gets going it kinda loses steam. It also suffers from possibly the worst action film-making/editting I've ever seen.

It's actually quite amazing to see Nolan's progression as an action director from Begins -> Dark Knight -> Inception. It's a big step up in Dark Knight, with the longer takes and cutting across action, and Inception is even better.

The one thing that really pisses me off with Nolan though is he never uses bullet squibs at ALL. I realize these movies are PG-13, but things like the Bourne/Bond movies still get away with it, you just use smaller and darker bullet hits. In the batman movies and inception, characters just fall down without any visible hit at all, and it's kinda distracting to me. I noticed this in the Dark Knight Rises prologue as well.