Overlong and overhyped

A SOUND like a batgloved fist smacking into a cupped palm is what this film delivers: only deafeningly amplified and clarified with crisp, digital precision.

It is the sound of all other recent super-hero movies getting their butts well and truly kicked.

The Dark Knight is strange, dark, grandiose and mad; it is overlong and overhyped but hugely entertaining. In a simple, physical sense it really is huge, with cityscape sequences filmed on Imax technology, that demand to be been on the vast Imax screen.

Watching the first dizzying, vertiginous overhead shot of the glittering skyscrapers and minuscule streets, I literally forgot to breathe for a second or two, and found myself teetering forward on my seat.

The Dark Knight is the continuation of British director Christopher Nolan's reinvention of the Batman story and it takes the story up to his primal confrontation with the Joker, the villain who among the wrongdoer-gallery ranged against Batman is first among equals: here leading an unspeakable cabal of wiseguys.

Batman himself (although this camp designation is now not used) is again played by Christian Bale, clanking around in a kind of titanium-lite exoskeleton and making use of a heavy-duty Batmobile so macho and military-looking it makes a Humvee look like some kind of Prius. Otherwise, he bops around town on a brutal motorbike with wheels the size of rubber boulders, cape fluttering in the slipstream.

The Joker is played, tremendously, by the late Heath Ledger. His great grin, though enhanced by rouge, has evidently been caused by two horrid slash-scars to the corners of his mouth, and his whiteface makeup is always cracking and peeling off, perhaps due to the dried remnants of tears, making him look like some self-hating Pagliaccio of crime, sweating backstage after the latest awful spectacular.

Batman is still a reasonably novel figure in Gotham City as the action begins. They still refer to this dubious vigilante with a retro-sounding definite article: he is "the Batman".

And there is a new, conventional crime fighter in town: the handsome, dashing district attorney Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart.

There are some really exhilarating set-pieces, especially the one that kickstarts the proceedings: Nolan starts off with a high-tension, high-anxiety bank raid, carried out by a dodgy crew all in Joker masks, all whispering among themselves about the crazy guy in clown makeup who hired them to do the job. Why isn't he there personally? Wait - is he there personally?

Various debates about Jack Bauer/24-type torture methods appear to show modern Hollywood discovering, if not a conscience exactly, then a certain self-consciousness.

But the film is better at pure action - particularly one awe-inspiring chase scene Nolan later contrives between Batman on his bike and the Joker at the wheel of an enormous truck.

The conclusion to this sequence had the audience in a semi-standing crouch of disbelief.

Perhaps the most bizarre moment comes when the Joker has evidently abducted some unfortunate from the local psychiatric hospital to "impersonate" Batman's lost love: this man does appear to resemble Maggie Gyllenhaal: a joke of considerable malice, sophistication and lack of taste.

The Dark Knight's massive box-office success has surely given Nolan the means to write his own cheque, and in addition something sweeter still - clout.