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I'm a little late on writing this review, but it's taken me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to say about The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan's second Batman movie is a wildly ambitious, sprawling, intricately plotted epic, and while it isn't entirely successful in realizing those ambitions, it's a far more complex and rewarding piece of work than any comic book-based film before. It's certainly a vast improvement over Batman Begins, which took way too long to get its narrative engines up to full blast and was hampered by uninspired villains and Katie Holmes. Fortunately, she's been replaced by the vastly superior Maggie Gyllenhall this time out, and the villains are anything but uninspired.

Even if he hadn't died, Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker would be attracting the lion's share of the attention, even though The Dark Knight is truly an ensemble production and there are several other performances that are equally impressive in their own ways (more on that later). That said, Ledger is riveting from the moment he first appears on screen, and he never slacks off. Anyone familiar with Alan Moore's The Killing Joke will recognize the essentials of Ledger's Joker, as he possesses the same motivation: introducing chaos into an apparently orderly system and trying to prove that people will always crack and go mad when placed under extreme stress. And if all Ledger did was re-create that Joker, his performance would still be great, but he goes beyond that and adds his own little quirks and eccentricities to the character that make him a truly terrifying force of nature, entirely unpredictable and unfathomable. From his strange lilting vocal delivery to his jerky, elongated motions and his creepy habit of licking his scars, everything about this Joker is disturbing.

But in all the praise for Ledger, another truly stellar performance has been overlooked: Aaron Eckhart's, as Harvey Dent. At first, his character appears just as shallow and smug as the tobacco industry marketer Eckhart portrayed with such transcendent sliminess in Thank You For Smoking, but as the story progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that Dent is a man with noble intentions but serious weaknesses, and Eckhart conveys his humanity and his fragility in a way that makes us actually care about his fate. And since anyone with even a passing familiarity with Batman history knows how Dent winds up (though the way he gets there is different, and also leads to the film's most emotionally powerful scene, a hospital room confrontation between Dent and the Joker), this means we spend a lot of time dreading what's to come. It's ambiguous exactly what happens to Dent at the end, but if there's another sequel, they'd damn well better bring him back.

I notice I really haven't mentioned Batman much yet. razz Christian Bale does a fine job as Bruce Wayne, and he's successful at conveying his character's emotional torments, especially as he comes to feel more and more responsible for the Joker's killings. But his Batman is one of the film's weakest points, mostly because he insists on delivering his lines in an exaggerated, pseudo-Clint Eastwood growl even more excessive than the one he employed last time out. Yeah, we get it, you don't want people to guess you're Bruce Wayne, but still, it's a little much, and it interferes with the realistic, believable atmosphere Nolan has taken so much effort to establish.

The film's other flaw is its length-- at 2 and a half hours, it simply goes on too long, and while the final twenty minutes are among the best in the entire movie, by that point I was exhausted and ready for it to just end, already. But otherwise, it's excellent, and the supporting cast is as fine as the leads-- Gyllenhall's smart, sexy turn makes Katie Holmes's version of the same character look even more embarrassing, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are their usual low-key, professional selves, and Gary Oldman makes Lt. Gordon nearly as moving a figure as Dent, though in a very different way. The cinematography is excellent (with real-world Chicago standing in for Gotham, and it feels just right), and Nolan's direction keeps things from getting overly murky despite the story's frequent twists and turns. His ability to grapple with serious themes and to take his story into unexpected territory is what elevates The Dark Knight way above any previous superhero film. It's not perfect, but it is utterly compelling and worthwhile.

Rating: 9/10