Also from LA.com: 'Batman' interactive

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BY GLENN WHIPP >FILM CRITIC

Arriving mid-summer after the heroics of the Indy and Iron Man, Hulk and Hellboy and that smart-ass bullet-bender from “Wanted,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” better pack a lot of wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-whop-bam-boom or risk irrelevancy.

The good news: It does.

Nolan has crafted an exceedingly ambitious, unrelentingly dark follow-up to “Batman Begins” and has surpassed that flawed film in every way. Where the first movie had trouble transcending its origin story, “The Dark Knight” takes square aim at the nature of terrorism in a post 9-11 world, arguing that “some men aren’t looking for anything logical. Some men just want to see the world burn.”

You’ve probably guessed that the movie’s villain, The Joker, falls into that camp, though you could not say that Heath Ledger’s terrifying performance in any way approaches camp. Jack Nicholson played The Joker as a maniacal song-and-dance man. Ledger, with his smeared clown makeup, portrays the character as a truly frightening freak. “I’m like a dog chasing a car,” The Joker tells a would-be disciple. “But I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one.”

Nolan, who wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan, gets good mileage, as did Tim Burton, from the commonality between the clown-faced terrorist and bat-suited vigilante. Batman (Christian Bale), though, longs to hang up the cowl mask and sees his opportunity arrive with the ascendancy of Gotham’s new district attorney, a committed crime fighter named Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart, delivering his best work in a studio film). Dent is Batman’s lawmaker soul mate. He’s also millionaire Bruce Wayne’s rival for Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, taking over, in a definite upgrade, for Katie Holmes), the woman who makes Bruce’s heart skip a beat. This being a superhero movie, it’s a safe bet that there’s no picket fence in Batman’s future.

The Nolans, though, dig deeper, wanting to hammer home the personal cost of heroism and of doing the right thing even when the populace turns against you. In other words, expect “The Dark Knight” to get a lot of love from neoconservative bloggers in the next few weeks.

The Joker explains his past several times in the movie, but he changes his story with each telling. His is an evil that can’t be defined. It just is. And Batman is the judge and jury who must reign him in, employing a sophisticated surveillance system (just this once!) to accomplish his very necessary mission.

Of course, you can read the “The Dark Knight” on another level or enjoy it solely for its craftsmanship. Nolan shot six sequences of the film in IMAX, and the work of cinematographer Wally Pfister is a marvel of clarity and depth. Nolan remains a hit-and-miss action choreographer but he is a top-notch visual stylist capable of delivering stunning, iconic shots. (Ledger’s Joker — in disguise — walking away from a ticking time bomb is a study in perversity.)

The film ultimately falls just short in achieving its lofty ambitions, undone by a lack of connective tissue between scenes, a confusing action climax and a late-in-the-game character arc that feels somewhat rushed and arbitrary. But Nolan never for a second veers from the movie’s dark tone and themes and that kind of blinkered commitment is a rare find in a big-budget studio movie. And then there’s Ledger, losing himself under the greasepaint to such a degree that the finality of the performance doesn’t hit you until long after the movie ends. Man, he could act.

Glenn Whipp, (818) 713-3672. glenn.whipp@dailynews.com

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THE DARK KNIGHT:

PG-13: intense violence

Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart Director: Christopher Nolan

Running time: 2 h. 32 m.

Playing: Opens midnight tonight at select theaters. In wide release Friday, including IMAX theaters.

In a nutshell: Ambitious and relentlessly dark and altogether better than its predecessor.

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BATMAN INTERACTIVE: Learn about the history/evolution of the Batman legacy including comics, cartoons and the Batman movies. Take a quiz on your Batman know-how, watch the trailer for 'The Dark Knight' (in theaters this Friday) and learn about all of the characters that reside in the new Batman installment, 'The Dark Knight.'

RELATED LINKS:
'Deep into the Knight:' Director Christopher Nolan descends into the abyss with 'Batman: The Dark Knight'

'Heath Ledger: the Man, the Myth, the Legend'