This Joker is riled

Perhaps you've already sat through Hellboy II and The Incredible Hulk and Hancock this summer and concluded that the superhero genre is all washed up. Well, think again.

In The Dark Knight, writer-director Christopher Nolan dispenses with all the pop and kitsch and ultra-bright carnival of most comic-book sagas and instead reimagines the story of the Caped Crusader as an epic, brutal crime thriller. It’s a film that approaches questions of morality, goodness and evil with an almost Dostoyevskian complexity.

Drawing on influences as diverse as The Silence of the Lambs, Serpico and even The Godfather, Nolan conjures up a fully imagined alternate universe, where political alliances shift like the wind, and where three equally tortured souls are about to wage battle, both public and private, for salvation. I suspect most of this will sail straight over the heads of the younger people in the audience. But for everyone else, this is a rare gift: a summer extravaganza that displays patience, intelligence and sheer filmmaking zeal in equal measure.

Nolan announces his ambitions in the opening scene, a bank heist so immediate and original that it fools you into thinking you've never before seen a bank heist onscreen. A group of men in clown masks invade a mob-controlled savings and loan in the heart of Gotham City. The clowns proceed to booby-trap the hostages with grenades, at which point the bank's manager (William Fichtner) pulls out a gun and starts shooting. If you're seeing the movie in the IMAX format, for which Nolan expressly filmed a number of sequences, you feel as if you're trapped alongside the hostages, as the camera menacingly circles around the action. (A side note: You should beg, borrow, steal and even consider pledging your first born in order to see this movie in IMAX.) As this scene throttles to its bloody, bang-'em-up climax, and as one bad guy viciously turns against another, Nolan does more than just grab us by the throat. He also lays bare his central theme: that in the war between good and evil, honor is a relative and highly debatable ideal.

The ringmaster of this robbery, of course, turns out to be the Joker (Heath Ledger), a figure whose red-smeared lips are scarred into a permanent leer. His motive: to grab the attention of Gotham City's crime bosses, whom he hopes will hire him as a bounty hunter. The Joker believes that it’s not newly elected District Attorney Harvey Dent (a perfectly cast Aaron Eckhart) these bosses need to worry about, but the mysterious vigilante crusader Batman (Christian Bale) — and the Joker says that he's the only man who can kill the Caped Crusader.

So who, exactly, is this Joker? The screenplay (by Nolan and his brother Jonathan) portrays him as an example of pure, post-Columbine sociopathy; a bad guy who seeks to generate chaos for chaos' sake. The Joker has no real name or back story (in fact, he constantly changes his explanation of how he got those scars on his mouth). And while he pretends he's after money, he's mostly interested in exposing the moral fecklessness of the "heroes" around him. As played by the late Ledger, in a transformative, soon-to-be-legendary performance, the ante gets upped even further. Flicking his tongue constantly to moisten his cracked lips and speaking in a nattering voice that makes him sound like Woody Allen's homicidal cousin, Ledger gives us a physically slight, pathetically banal creep — the very opposite of a supervillain. He's also a welcome antidote to the overwrought Ringling Bros. theatrics Jack Nicholson brought to the role in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman.

Ledger is so stunningly good that the movie risks losing our interest whenever he's off the screen. Fortunately, Nolan, much like the Joker himself, has a few aces up his sleeve, starting with the character of Bruce Wayne/Batman. Whereas Batman Begins spent too much time inside Wayne's head, forcing us to consider the character's self-hatred from every angle, this new movie makes his dilemma at once simpler and more touchingly complicated. He still yearns to settle down happily with Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes), even though she's now dating Harvey Dent. And it's his earnest belief that Dent might truly be Gotham's savior that propels the plot and forces Dent and Batman to become unlikely, unsteady allies.

Indeed, that's the trick of this movie — no matter how grandiose the stakes, the struggles feel curiously commonplace. None of the three central figures has especially unusual strengths or powers (unless you count that newly rigged contraption which allows Batman to listen in on the entire city's cellphone conversations). Instead, they do what we all do in life: They push against the limits of their own moral codes; they yearn for power and authority; mostly, they try — and often fail — to control the chaos around them.

But let's not say much more about the sprawling, shape-shifting story, which — like all of Nolan's work, including Memento and The Prestige — relies heavily upon unexpected switches and characters who are never quite what they seem to be. There are plenty of other details to praise: Working once again with cinematographer Wally Pfister and production designer Nathan Crowley, the director turns Gotham into a vivid amalgamation of Chicago and New York, a place grittily lived-in and rotting with decay.

Like such classics as Chinatown and The French Connection, The Dark Knight is as much a thriller as it is an anatomy of an American city — impressive, considering that this city is entirely make-believe.

And then there are the elegantly executed action sequences, which so often force Batman to make choices that only further muddy his conscience; the deft, indelible supporting performance by Gary Oldman, who transforms the stock character of Lieutenant Gordon into a fascinating and mysterious figure; and the gentle flourishes of humor supplied by Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman as Bruce Wayne's loyal employees, Alfred and Lucius. (If Batman Begins too often choked on its own solemnity, this movie offers just the right dose of playfulness.)

Forgive the gushing, but it's hard to find much to complain about here — even the film's 2 1/2-hour running time feels entirely justified. This big, bold, brazen work is the best movie released so far this year.

The Dark Knight

Rating: 5 stars

Director: Christopher Nolan

Stars: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger

Length: 152 min.

Rated: PG-13 (violence)