Dark and stormy 'Knight'

Batman sequel turns brooding into pop art

It has become standard operating procedure to envision superheroes as tortured figures - even Will Smith's satirical Hancock came with emotional baggage - yet no superhero movie has been as doom-laden as "The Dark Knight."

Oppressive but never overwrought, it's a comic-book adaptation in which there will be blood.

Paul Thomas Anderson's fuming "There Will Be Blood," an Oscar runner-up this year, is not too lofty of a comparison (neither, really, would be the tragedies of Shakespeare). Both pictures employ staggering cinematic artistry to explore the pursuit of power and the way it can corrupt even the most well-meaning of men.

After accepting his cape and cowl in "Batman Begins," Gotham City billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) presides over a crime-ridden metropolis at the start of "The Dark Knight."

A rampant mob and corrupt police force still intimidate the town, with Batman, police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and crusading district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) trying to uphold the law.

Making judicious use of shadowy Chicago locations, returning director Christopher Nolan imbues each scene with foreboding. Our familiar skyscrapers drip with despair.

You would think the arrival of the Joker (Heath Ledger) would lighten things up, even though he is a villain. Yet this is not the prankish clown of Batmans past. As envisioned by Nolan and portrayed by Ledger, he's nothing less than an anarchic sociopath.

Ledger sports greasy, green-tinged hair, cracking white makeup that makes him awkwardly contort his scarred lips and a permanent slouch. It's as if he had bad posture as a kid and things only got worse from there.

It is a delirious, high-wire act to watch. You can see Ledger's eyes darting about in each scene looking for a way to unsettle his co-stars, which he does. Better yet, he unsettles us.

Part of what keeps us off balance is the way Ledger makes the Joker clumsy and careless. You get the feeling the first thing he does when he gets a gun is remove the safety device. Flippant about his own past trauma - he offers different stories about the source of his facial scars - this is a criminal bent only on unleashing chaos.

And oh what chaos "The Dark Knight" captures. Nolan used Imax cameras for six sequences in the picture, most of which are central action set pieces. You haven't seen this film until you've seen it in Imax.

From an opening bank heist in which the camera soars out of a skyscraper's window to the Joker's destruction of an entire hospital (I loved Ledger's irked grimace when the detonator initially fails), "The Dark Knight" makes mayhem look majestic. You almost understand what the Joker gets so excited about.

Nolan, who also wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan, is interested in more than pyrotechnics, however.

The Joker may be the picture's most arresting figure, yet he's simply a measuring stick for the limits of Batman's vigilantism. How far will Wayne go to stop this terrorist? Will the Joker pull him - not to mention Dent, who suffers greatly for being the public face of justice - deeper into madness?

"The Dark Knight" takes us deep into madness, albeit of the pop variety. It's a comic-book adaptation with real weight.

Most superhero movies make you slightly envious of the out-of-this-world characters and their powers. After watching "The Dark Knight," you'll be relieved to be normal.

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