Sensational, grandly sinister and not for the kids, "The Dark Knight"
elevates pulp to a very high level. Heath Ledger's Joker takes it
higher still, and the 28-year-old actor's death earlier this year of
an accidental overdose lends the film an air of a funeral and a
rollicking, out-of-control wake mixed together. In "The Dark Knight,"
Ledger makes all other comic book screen villains look like Baby Huey.
Like Shakespeare's Iago or Richard III, like Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal
Lecter or Javier Bardem's implacable murderer in "No Country For Old
Men," this is no Method maniac, asking or telling anyone about his
character's motivation. At one point Ledger throws up his hands and
says, agitatedly, that it's a waste of time looking for a rationale
behind the Joker's smeary psycho-harlequin makeup.

"I'm a dog chasing cars," he says. "I wouldn't know what to do with
one of them if I caught it."

Director and co-writer Christopher Nolan, who fashioned the screenplay
with his brother, Jonathan, has created the most ambitious and sleekly
beautiful of all the superhero screen outings. A handful of others—"
Superman II" and " Spider-Man 2" come to mind—may have fewer loose
ends and a more exhilarating spirit. They're certainly shorter; this
one is 152 minutes. But "The Dark Knight," which improves upon the
solemn authority Nolan and Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne brought to "
Batman Begins," has an atmospheric shimmer all its own. Its unsung
hero is cinematographer Wally Pfister, who makes every interior and
exterior a thing of burnished, menacing beauty. Shot largely in
Chicago at night, greatly aided by production designer Nathan Crowley,
this is the most nocturnally insinuating entertainment since Michael
Mann's "Collateral."

No heartland paradise
Sampling every flat Midwestern dialect he no doubt heard while
shooting in Chicago, Ledger gives the Joker the deceptively bland
vowel sounds of heartland America. But Gotham City is no heartland
paradise. It teeters on the verge of bloody anarchy, and its most
outré citizen licks his chops, literally, as if he can't get the taste
of blood out of his mouth.