An impeccably crafted but inevitably problematic rumination on corruption, chaos and the choices faced by “decent men in an indecent time,” The Dark Knight has ambitions far beyond those of the average comic-book franchise flick. Indeed, director Christopher Nolan heaps gravitas onto Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s creation like so much sauerkraut on a hotdog.
The Batman saga has always encouraged much in the way of Nietzschean chin-scratching and Manichean hand-wringing. With 2005’s Batman Begins, Nolan re-energized the cycle by simultaneously reintroducing its philosophical underpinnings and roughening up the action. Here, he doesn’t achieve the same balance of brain and brawn even if certain images — like the bravura shot of Heath Ledger’s Joker in a nurse’s outfit blithely strolling away from a hospital that he’s in the midst of blowing up — are instantly iconic.

Sounding more like a New Jersey bookie than Jack Nicholson’s hammy slice of villainy, the late Ledger’s defiantly un-flamboyant version of Batman’s least favourite funnyman proves to be The Dark Knight’s sparkplug. Whenever the movie strays too far from his radius, matters bog down, such that the 152-minute running time can seem both protracted and oddly abbreviated. Likewise, the IMAX-enhanced action sequences are tersely paced, impressively scaled yet largely devoid of novelty.

And though Nolan’s almost palpably eager for The Dark Knight to be read as a political allegory, its questions about the value of laws in a lawless world has been more clearly articulated in predecessors ranging from The Ox-Bow Incident to Dirty Harry. Nevertheless, that such an angry, cynical and combative work could ever qualify as mass entertainment testifies to the indecency of our times.