Let me give you my card — Heath Ledger is superbly creepy as Batman’s nemesis, The Joker

The Dark Knight

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Long before it opened, The Dark Knight had built up the kind of awe that only a revived super-franchise and millions of dollars in marketing can buy. The respect it earned from fans might not have been of the “cowardly and superstitious” variety, but there’s no denying it generated superheroic expectations — a proven series in a refreshingly dark vein; buzz of a posthumous Oscar nod for Heath Ledger’s final role as the maniacal Joker; the controlled demolition of a building constructed for a single shot; the Batcycle; etc. The only question was whether it could deliver.

Simply, it did. And now, a week after its première, there’s been nothing but praise for the second instalment of director Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. There’s also no question that the film deserves its praise: it comes out swinging and earns every one of its cheers.

The action setpieces are stunning. The film begins with an IMAX-optimized bank robbery that offers a heist scene on par with the best crime thriller climax without the hours of mounting tension. Explicit, existential themes of fear and personal accountability are developed alongside action that almost never slows for the lesson, mixing what might otherwise be a treatise on America’s culture of fear into a ride that turns that same fear into adrenaline.

And, impossible as it might seem, Ledger’s performance deserves every effusive drop of praise it’s received. Walking a fine line between intensity and absurdity, he finds frightening charm in his role as a self-titled servant of chaos — the kind of villain you can’t help but love, though certainly not the kind you’d ever want to meet.

Ledger’s performance is a perfect turn in a movie about complicated identity, from a white-knight-turned-two-face (Aaron Eckhart) to Batman (Christian Bale) himself. Unfortunately, The Dark Knight’s main slip comes in the final execution of this otherwise subtle interplay.

Brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay is nearly pitch perfect in finding meaning through action, but it does occasionally pause for the familiar schedule of superheroic rhetoric. With The Dark Knight divided into a neat five-act structure, it’s only a shame that the last fifth ends with a series of declarations that have characters enumerating their roles in the film’s broader theme; Coles Notes for a movie you’ve already been paying rapt attention to.

These slips, coupled with a few plot points that strain even the elastic plausibility of a comic book world, are the few light points in an otherwise brilliantly dark film. Balancing a serious, adult tone with action that’s as novel and gleeful as giving Batman’s utility belt to an eight-year-old, The Dark Knight meets its expectations head on and beats them into a glorious pulp.