Film

Nolan’s sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins internalizes the schism between serious aims and summer-movie duties. The problem isn’t the admittedly jaw-dropping Sturm und Drang—this is Batman, not Bergman—but how the pummeling action rarely informs the psychological angst. Still wrestling with a DSM-IV’s worth of disorders, the Caped Crusader (Bale) now has to contend with Harvey Dent (Eckhart), a district attorney with a transformative face-lift coming his way, and the Joker (Ledger). Thankfully, an origin story isn’t offered for the grinning archnemesis; he simply appears like the Ebola virus, armed with an appetite for destruction and John Wayne Gacy’s makeup manual. What the late actor accomplishes with little more than a nurse uniform and a Groucho Marx waddle makes the various set pieces—never mind Bale’s raspy, remote characterization—pale in comparison.

The stakes, however, are higher than a villain makeover. To paraphrase a colleague, the director is going for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance of men-in-tights films, which makes sequences like an IMAX-ed Mission: Impossible–style kidnapping all the more superfluous.

Granted, Nolan does make effective use of Chicago, barely disguised at all to function as Gotham. Against those familiar backdrops Nolan plays out something operatic in its earnestness. Why so serious, you ask? Intelligence is Nolan’s strength, and significance is his aim here. The fact that his higher aims keep taking time out for blockbuster shenanigans any hack could provide is a buzzkill.