the knight is darkest before the dawn

So after months of excitement on my part, to the point of waiting for the crushing disappointment, I can hereby confirm that The Dark Knight pretty much took the bar, set it above arms reach and then blew the **** out of it, as far as any of the genres it touches are concerned.

Heath was good. Heath was very, very good. But Heath was only one of a large cast, all on equal footing. I'm not one for spoilers so I'll be careful, but Eckhart's character study finally banishes the demons of Joel Schumacher's version of Harvey Dent with an arch that, even if you know anything about Batman is still crushing; Gyllenhaal amends for Katie Holmes, the weakest part of Begins; Gary Oldman does good guy and pulls it off again; hell, I'll say it (little spoiler): even Cillian Murphy's back for a cameo to atone for the crap way he was dispatched previously.

Yeah, so Ledger will get nominated for an Actor Oscar. As a whole it's hard to know whether he actually merits it, but for his first 30 seconds of screen time alone you would give it to him. And he is creepy as hell.

But Bale is his match. For anyone who's ever been lucky enough to read Alan Moore's The Killing Joke will recognise some of the dynamic between the Bat and his greatest foe, though of course the narratives are poles apart. One of the great victories of this film is it succeeds where Iron Man, for instance, would have liked to: we get time among the violence and fast-paced narrative to actually get inside the psyche of just about every major player. This is about as close to a character study as a comic book movie is going to get; not in the sense of Peter Parker's torment, or Wolverine's haunted past; but seeing what really cracks them up without 45 minutes of opening exegesis required. Instead, in looks and reactions, Jonathan Nolan has managed to write and tie together believe strands in an unbelievable universe, and his brother has done a very tidy job of bringing them to life.

Of course, there's always a flaw... sonar? Really? I know he's a bat, but.... come on.