The Dark Knight (12A)

Jul 27 2008 Mickey McMonagle

5/5

It's rare that a film of this stature can live up to its hype, let alone surpass it. Throw in the tragic death of Heath Ledger and the fact his career-best performance as The Joker has become his epitaph and most movies, however good, could not fail to suffer, wilting under the ridiculous weight of such great expectations.

But this is not just any other movie - this is the film Batman fans have been waiting for since, well, forever.

With Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan reinvented the origin story in a dark, clever and riveting new way, laying down his blueprint for future follow-ups.

Here, he completely delivers on the promise he made in that movie, taking the Caped Crusader further down the same path but throwing into the mix quite possibly the best movie villain ever in the form of Ledger's truly terrifying Joker.

Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the character was a caricature with the threat of violence tossed around in a scary but fun manner, while Ledger's is a terrorist in every sense of the word.

He has no interest in money - in fact he burns the stuff - which makes him all the more powerful an adversary, His only interest is in causing mayhem, pain and destruction on as grand a scale as possible.

While Christian Bale's Batman was planning to retire and leave crime-fighting to the cops - most of them crooked - this ruthless new adversary forces him firmly back into the fray.

The challenge for Batman is to keep his scruples intact while battling an enemy who has none of his own and uses the superhero's morals to his own advantage at every turn of course Bale himself faced an even greater challenge, of somehow stopping Ledger from stealing his movie with his virtuoso performance.

Happily, he pulls it off. His Batman is more mature than ever, a genuinely torn man struggling to face his inner demons while trying to defeat the very real one facing him in his city.

The true tragedy in all this is Ledger's untimely demise as here he shows once and for all that he was on course to become one of the greatest movie actors of his generation.

Quite how they will manage to continue this series in his absence remains to be seen - there will be a gaping, Joker-shaped hole in the next film, whichever rumours regarding replacement villains turn out to be true.

For now, though, sit back and enjoy 150 minutes of a superhero movie which is genuinely more of a character film than an action movie - and all the better for it.