NEW BATMAN REVIEW: The Dark Knight (12A)

A new Batman film was always going to stir up a certain amount of interest.

As of January 22 this year, however, The Dark Knight (12A) suddenly gained the kind of fevered expectation that transcends any modest interest stirred up by routine movie marketing campaigns.

It might seem tactless and tasteless to refer to the sad death of Heath Ledger in these terms. But there isn't a film fan worth their salt who hasn't been chomping at the bit to see what this emerging talent has done with the character of veteran Batman nemesis The Joker.

Overnight it went from being a much-anticipated (and initially derided) appearance to the swansong of an actor talked about as one of the Hollywood talents of his generation.

It would be morbid to dwell on this matter, yet that Batman has always been the most morbid of superheroes, and the knowledge Ledger didn't live to see the film's release hangs heavy over it.

And he nails it. His high-wire performance brings out The Joker's sadistic exuberance in a gutsy mix of mannered mania and twisted psychology. The one disappointment is that he doesn't feature more, because when he does the screen comes alive in what is otherwise a superior if flawed thinking person's blockbuster.

But then again it seems somehow apt that he isn't given centre stage entirely; his absent moments create a kind of pervading tension as he loiters in the shadows, before violently emerging in all his charismatic harlequin savagery. Few performances combine humour and terror so well.

It's not kow-towing to shallow celebrity hype to talk up his part in The Dark Knight because he makes it his film. It's nearly impossible to recognise him as the same man who played the taciturn Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain.

The talk of an Oscar is premature and perhaps in poor taste given the Academy generally over-looks comic book movies, but you never know.

So what else? Well, in the spirt of too many of today's blockbuster, it's long at nearly two-and-a-half-hours. But fortunately Chris Nolan's direction mostly manages to pace it out despite the occasional longeur.

And, for a 12A, it's remarkably violent, with plenty of knife-related violence alone to stir up controversy. As a comic book movie, though, with all the moral weight that comes with such films, it doesn't seek to glamorise these crimes. Instead it uses the anticipation of violence for some of The Dark Knight's tensest moments.

The story is complicated,­ convoluted even,­ involving as it does Godfather-style power wranglings between corrupt officialdom and the various gang factions fighting over Gotham.

But what it often lacks in narrative focus it makes up for with its characters. Christian Bale is, strangely, the unsung hero of this remodelled Batman, as his role as Wayne/Batman has again been overshadowed by the villain. Resembling a corrupted matinée idol, he lays reasonable claim to being the best screen dark knight to date.

Aaron Eckhart is the other stand-out as the ill-fated idealistic district attorney Harvey Dent, his lantern-jaw looks perfectly suited to a comic book film, even if his character's moral volte face in the  third act isn't entirely believable.

In fact, the film's one main let-down is its credibility. That might be an absurd thing to say about a dark fantasy, but while Nolan has evidently gone to lengths to strip his Gotham back to a neon-lit realism­ a welcome, modern change from Tim Burton's expressionism and Joel Schumacher's day-glo kitsch, it then breaks its own rule by having characters fall 20 storeys and escape without a scratch, and criminals who too easily hoodwink police and security officials.

If the director could find a better balance between the real and fantasy worlds (it's almost too bereft of style at times) then it could make for a truly classic Batman. As it is, this will be chiefly ­ and rightly ­ remembered for Ledger.

You can watch the film trailer for the movie here.