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Artful "Knight" requires a plunge to the dark aspect
Bruce Wayne is a tablet. But you know that.

In Christopher Nolan's grim and spectacular "Batman Begins" sequel, "The Dark Knight," the billionaire, completely inhabited by Christian Bale, is a bitter capsule.

He's also Gotham City's ideal defense in opposition to familiar foes like the mob and the recently arrived, wholly unique cost-free agent of anarchy who calls himself The Joker.

Only he does not want to believe that this.

In new Gotham D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Wayne sees a hero a metropolis can admire, a "white knight" who doesn't need to have to conceal in the noir shadows beneath a mask that tends to make him chat variety of amusing.

There's mutual admiration on Dent's aspect as well. Despite the fact that he hasn't a lot use for the smug Wayne, he mildly envies Batman's potential to finish-run the policies when the worst of the worst are just out of achieve.

With Bale's modulated, sinewy presense and the casting of the late Heath Ledger and Eckhart as the Joker and Dent, "The Dark Knight" takes its position amid the incredibly finest (and arguably greater) sequels of outstanding originals: "The Godfather Portion II," "Spider-Guy 2," "Terminator 2."

Conflicts abound in "The Dark Knight." A lot more than any other recent comic-book hero flick, Nolan's tour de force provides an enduring, unsettlingly bleak fable of our second. The theme of the lawman's reliance on people outside the law to get down people who know not the rule of law beats at the bruised heart of this flick.

The tale moves with a head-on velocity because it doesn't have to rehash Batman's psychic origins.

What you see is what he is: conflicted, wise, driven to vanquish the poor guys.

Wayne's internal struggles are nevertheless here, embodied most in his wish for his beloved Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who has fallen for Dent.

In the beginning the baddies are a league of mobsters, Eric Robert's Maroni between them. They're trumped. For a minute, a Hong Kong businessman named Lau believes he holds all the cards. He doesn't hold the wildest a single.

Whilst the director and his co-author and brother Jonathan Nolan display the Joker consolidating his energy (commencing with a diabolical financial institution robbery), they in no way dive into his psychological back story.

The Joker tells more than one sorry listener his tale of woe. Like the killers in the terrifying "Funny Video games," he enjoys tormenting our desire to fully grasp the roots of menace.

So it is Michael Caine's Alfred who gives a motive that sticks: "Some guys just want to watch the world burn."

So, you consult, is Ledger's overall performance as spectacular as rumored?

Let's place it this way: The sensitive soul who made the anguish of a racist's son in "Monster's Ball" and the pining misery of a cowpoke in "Brokeback Mountain" so rending is nowhere in sight. Batman (Christian Bale) on his ATV-like Bat-pod, a bat toy the two cool and believable. (Warner Bros. Pictures) This is how uncanny, how deliberately other the actor's portrayal of the scarred, encounter- painted arch-villain is.

An evil clown has taken his spot - not a Bozo but an even creepier character than the E-Trade child springs for.

We invest the opening scenes of "The Dark Knight" (shot with IMAX know-how) pondering when the Joker will initial pop up. Cleverly, audiences are not the only people questioning. A gang of clown-masked financial institution robbers gossip about their mysterious boss as they prepare to hit a mafia-owned financial institution.

Nolan and his gifted collaborators, chief between them cinematographer Wally Pfister, have whipped up a best storm of performances, moods and teeth-grinding action.

From the ATV-like Bat-pod to the beyond-GPS surveillance program, the toys aren't simply awesome: They're believable, even disturbing in their achieve.

Maybe the very best motion pictures are exactly that mainly because the onscreen gods are in the information.

Caine and Morgan Freeman return as Alfred and Lucius Fox, the two males closest to Wayne and most in tune with his emotional moral dilemmas.

Gyllenhaal improves on Katie Holmes' flip as Rachel Dawes. Her confront-off with the Joker is foolhardy and appreciated. And Gary Oldman has more to do, and does it, with Lt. Gordon.

Some could tear up at the Joker's situation that has two lovers sitting in diverse warehouses wired to barrels of fuel. Who will Batman conserve?

But the Nolan brothers have published an even finer set piece. Batman's not the only a person confronted with moral dilemmas.

The Joker has wired two ferries to blow. A single is complete of jump-suited prisoners. The other is packed with frightened commuters. Each and every ship has been provided the detonator to the explosives on the other boat. Be aware to mothers and fathers: "Dark Knight" retained a PG-13 rating even as it flies like a bat out of hell toward the terrorizing energy of some thing deserving an R. Kids may be especially disturbed at a sequence in which a kid is place in mortal hazard, his mothers and fathers helpless to do anything at all but beg and weep.

In an recent interview with The Denver Submit, director Julie Taymor (prepping "Spiderman" for Broadway) spoke about how the superhero comic is aspect of our national folklore.

Viewing "The Dark Knight" is like gazing into a mirror on a waning moon evening: chilling and mesmerizing.