Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Premise: A sequel to Batman Begins. As Batman (Christian Bale), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) close in on Gotham City’s organized crime syndicate, the local crime lords turn to The Joker (Heath Ledger), an anarchic criminal genius with no scruples and a hidden agenda.

What Works: Where Batman Begins took a step away from formula and convention in the superhero genre, The Dark Knight takes a leap, grabbing elements from crime films like Martin Scorsese's The Departed and Michael Mann’s Heat and placing them inside of a superhero context. The transposition works extremely well and the combination elevates the picture beyond a superhero film or a crime film and into something nearing a Greek tragedy. The dramatic heart of The Dark Knight is supported by some tremendous performances. The most celebrated has been Heath Ledger as The Joker and it is a performance that will enter the archives of cinema as one of the most memorable villains ever committed to film. Like other actors who have played the role, Ledger captures the maniacal nature of The Joker but what sets his portrayal, and the film, apart from other superhero adventures is that this may be one of the only times where the filmmakers realized the true potential of superheroes and super villains; they are flesh and blood characters as icons or metaphors for complex sociological, psychological, and philosophical ideas. The conflict between The Joker and Batman in The Dark Knight is not just a man dressed up in a cape chasing another guy in clown makeup. These characters are hypertexts of ideas, representing the conflict between chaos and control, the line between cop and criminal, and the tricky areas where lawless action may be morally correct and lawful action could be immoral. And as Ledger's Joker embodies the anarchic glee of a man who just wants to watch the world burn, Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart play men who try to stop him and in their efforts risk being corrupted themselves. Christian Bale steps up his work from Batman Begins and takes the character down darker roads and expands on the flaws that were established in the previous film. Where most superheroes struggle with duality, trying to balance their heroic alter ego with a normal identity, Bruce Wayne has at least three faces and in this film he's not clear which, if any of them, are the real Wayne. Aaron Eckhart’s work is also very strong and he has the biggest leap to make as an idealistic district attorney who is corrupted by his own desire to have justice seen through. His story is the biggest tragedy of the film and one of the most pertinent to the film's probing questions about justice and heroism.

What Doesn’t: The one weakness of the film is in its treatment of Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Where Batman Begins gave the character something to do, her place in this story has been supplanted by Harvey Dent, and so she is left to stand around and look pretty. It’s a disappointing waste of a character in what is otherwise an excellent film.

Bottom Line: The Dark Knight is one of the great superhero films of all time. This picture fully realizes where a superhero film can go and it takes us there, sometimes into very frightening places but always interesting ones.