5/6 stars *
I’m ordering you, point-blank, to watch The Dark Knight – not just because it is hands-down the best film in the Batman franchise, but because it’s a world apart from the recent comic-to-celluloid drivel you’ve been sopping up in the cinema (with the possible exception of Iron Man).

There will always be haters, though – some have objected to the length of the film (152 minutes), but like Peter Jackson’s King Kong and other drawn-out sagas, three hours did the job. A shorter running time wouldn’t have done justice to its level of detail and character development, and wouldn’t have fully captured Christian Bale’s tortured Bruce Wayne, or the origins of Aaron Eckhart’s excellent Two-Face. Some complained about the excessive viral marketing on Warner Bros’ part, which generated unprecedented hype for the film. And we hardly need to spell out the untimely tragedy that added more fuel to the fire. But even after being saturated with pre-Dark Knight chatter, people were still champing at the bit to watch it. Some – like myself – watched the damn thing twice, and enjoyed every second of it.

Without spoiling anything, the story picks up after Batman Begins (2005) – The Dark Knight continues to patrol the streets of Gotham City while deterring wannabe vigilantes from trying to ‘help him’. Bruce Wayne presents a pretty face for the company while Wayne Manor is rebuilt. In the meantime, Gotham’s organised-crime mobs join forces to combat the overzealous new district attorney, Harvey Dent (Eckhart), while a psychotic clown known as The Joker (Heath Ledger) carves out a niche for himself in the city’s underworld.

Forget the discrepancies about how Dent became Two-Face (in the comic his face is burned off by acid, not petrol). It’s a minor deviation that I’m sure longtime fans can forgive; Eckhart put on his best fundamental-fatalist face for the role and elevates the character light years beyond Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face in the mediocre Batman Forever (1995). Dent’s obsession with fate and justice translates perfectly into what Two-Face represents – making his own odds in an unfair world. And as for the most anticipated performance of all? The late Ledger is The Joker, from his sociopathic giggle to brilliantly lucid diatribes on order and chaos – a far cry from Jack Nicholson’s (fine, but dandy) Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989). Certainly there would be no Ledger-Joker without Nicholson-Joker, but Ledger is way more McMurphy (Nicholson’s schizophrenic character in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) than garden-variety maniac. Like the comic, The Dark Knight offers no insight on The Joker’s background, creating an almost preternatural, enigmatic aura about him.

Ledger’s Joker is, in many ways, the personification of urban life in Gotham City itself – constantly in flux, a self-styled ‘unstoppable object’. Even though he isn’t in the last 15 minutes of the film he somehow manages to have the final say on Gotham’s status quo – you come away feeling like The Joker might be the most truthful character in the story. The only complaint I really have is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s overplayed Rachel Dawes (still a step ahead of Katie Holmes) – a solid effort on her part, but unable to keep up with her stellar castmates. But that’s hardly anything to complain about in light of such a great film – it’s been said before and I’ll say it again: it has ‘Best Picture Oscar’ written all over it.