Good as it was, Batman Begins was just a warm-up for this latest installment in director Christopher Nolan's franchise, an adrenaline-charged action-thriller that is also a complex and luxuriously moody rumination on human nature, heroes and villains, and order vs. chaos.
Christian Bale returns as the movie's iconic (albeit thoroughly human) hero, a man who thrives on the importance of symbols. But it's Heath Ledger who pushes the film into the cinematic stratosphere as The Joker. A deranged spook with Ratso Rizzo's phlegmatic snarl and splotchy make-up swiped from Bette Davis' Baby Jane, Ledger's Joker is a gestalt of the century's biggest bogeymen (think Osama by way of Dr. Lector), with the movie strongly suggesting a symbiotic relationship between his random sadism and the more orderly vigilantism of his caped and cowled nemesis. The director and his sibling co-writer, Jonathan Nolan, fill the film with intriguing and disturbing mirror images and parallels, while the interlocking storylines twist and turn with the aggressive intricacy of Nolan's earlier Memento even as The Dark Knight plows full steam ahead at a breathtaking clip. Fans may wish the movie were simply a little more, well, fun, and there truthfully isn't a whole lot of light at this end of this bat-tunnel — but it's hard to deny The Dark Knight. It's a remarkable achievement, succeeding equally as sophisticated, artful drama, as whiz-bang entertainment and as bona fide pop-culture phenomenon. Hottest ticket of the summer, hands down, and one of the very best films of the year.
The Dark Knight (PG-13) Stars Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman. Opens July 18 at local theaters. 4.5 stars. —Lance Goldenberg
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2008.