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The Dark Knight is an impossibly good crime drama, populated with memorable characters and constructed with textured ideas about morality and justice and society's ability to effectively mete it out against the world's evils. It is an instant classic for comic book fans and is one of the most intensely entertaining films in years.

Those still inclined to discount comics or graphic novels as sources of artful, legitimate or even enlightened sources of storytelling will find director Christopher Nolan's sequel to his Batman Begins (2005) overly serious and enamored of itself, but that film satisfyingly channeled some of the finest mature interpretations of the character (Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli and Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale) and we are 22 years removed from the seminal publication of The Dark Knight Returns (also by Frank Miller), which helped usher in wider acceptance of adult-oriented storytelling with traditional superheroes and within the medium. Nolan's confident grasp of this now long established sensibility is one of The Dark Knight's many strengths.

The end of Batman Begins ominously foreshadows the events depicted here with Batman and (freshly appointed as Lieutenant) Jim Gordon discussing how Batman's actions will embolden criminal escalation. Gordon tells Batman, "We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics." "We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor piercing rounds." "You're wearing a mask...jumping off rooftops..." To illustrate the point, Gordon hands Batman evidence from a recent crime scene, a joker from a deck of cards, and voices concern about criminal intent to match or overcome Batman's theatricality. In The Dark Knight Nolan and Heath Ledger (as The Joker) conspire to fulfill and obliterate the boundaries of Gordon's fears.

Crass and self-serving James Lipton impersonations in the celebrity gossip press notwithstanding; it is not hyperbole to call Ledger's performance as The Joker indelible. Obliquely posited as a terrorist, Ledger's Joker unleashes waves of mayhem that the film's heroes struggle mightily to cope with and in an unnerving scene where Batman interrogates The Joker, Ledger balefully demonstrates the impotence of force against his specific brand of evil. It is one of many scenes where The Joker's unhinged but calculating state of mind is palpable. Nolan and Ledger also cleverly play with notions of The Joker's origins, reinforcing an idea of the character as an absolute that Batman will always have to contend with.

Aaron Eckhart joins the cast as crusading D.A. Harvey Dent and is given a dramatic arc that parallels Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman. The nature of The Joker's rampage forces both men to test the limits of their convictions and their competing affections for Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Batman Begins' Katie Holmes in this role) in a dramatic subplot that irrevocably changes each of them. Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon) and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) all reprise their roles and each brings his signature, understated style with him.

The quality of the cast is exceeded only by Nolan's assured guidance of all his film's moving parts. Weaker genre films are often drenched in selfish art direction, but Nolan favors a subtler approach that builds on the style established in the first film and he composes action and violence firmly grounded in reality. Audiences overdosed on poorly implemented computer graphics fakery will find The Dark Knight a jolting tonic.

The Dark Knight was previewed at an IMAX theatre and discerning viewers will not regret any extra effort spent in finding one of these screens near them to see the movie. Nolan is the first director to utilize the large format cameras in a traditional Hollywood production and the sublime effectiveness of select sequences virtually guarantees that more films (and someday entire productions) will be made in this way. Limitations the large and heavy IMAX cameras might have imposed on Nolan and his crew appear to have been shrugged off and the big format scenes are exponentially immersive and dynamic. Even non-IMAX portions of the film (the movie gently moves back and forth between aspect ratios - not as jarring as it sounds) had an image clarity I found startling, relative to recent experiences in traditional theatres.

As The Dark Knight hurtles toward its conclusion, fans will feel the movie assuming a rightful and near canonical place in their personal pop entertainment hierarchies and nonpartisans will appreciate Nolan's deft marriage of drama and spectacle as one of the best of its kind.

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