Some of the very first words Christian Bale utters as the eponymous role of 'soon-to-be-Batman' Bruce Wayne, in the preceding Batman film to this entitled Batman Begins, are to a thug in a remote prison located in the Far East: "you're not The Devil, you're practise" he hisses. The feeling's that 2008's The Dark Knight is where the practise ends and the fight with The Devil begins. This is my second crack at writing something up about the film, and while what I said initially was a little unfocused and targeted the wrong areas; I stand by the initial grade I gave it and similarly retained that similar sense of feeling underwhelmed when it finished. Even if it is deemed that The Dark Knight is one of the better comic book adaptations ever made, this is not saying a terrible lot given the bulk of entries in said film canon.

That old problem of dealing with the war genre and doing one's very best to document war as a horrid, gut-wrenching thing whilst maintaining sequences of war that cannot help but carry a sense of spectacle anyway, rears its head here. The Dark Knight documents a war on terrorism and sees Christohper Nolan attempt to echo a greater sense of things in the real world as he unleashes a character known as The Joker (Ledger) amongst the inhabitants of Gotham City, The results of his terrorist 'acts' in bringing down entire buildings allow Nolan to shoot the wreckage of said act with firefighters in the foreground and smoking rubble in the back, clearly calling on immediate 'post' imagery of the 9/11 New York attacks. Incidentally, and as one source which escapes me suggested, Joker's videos of captives held and forced to talk into video cameras evoke the actions of overseas terrorist cells, and their own methods of getting the message across to The West; while most of his scenes in which he is seen pottering around an area trying to intimidate carry an odd, distorted and erratic hand held aesthetic suggesting danger, distortion and chaos. Later on, semiology linked to fire fighting will be used again in the briefest of fashions, when a certain character, who's under threat from The Joker, is being transported in a police van: a burning fire truck is used as a blockade, and Nolan cleverly instills a further sense of victimised anguish into the audience.

In addition to biting all of this off, Nolan does his best to render the film a gangster film-come-neo noir whilst operating under this banner of a low MPAA/BBFC rating as the film additionally attempts to draw on parallels between The Joker, Batman and a third piece to the triangle in district attorney Harvey Dent (Eckhart). Indeed the film opens with an audacious robbery of mob money, as perpetrated by The Joker; his menace established by the fact his cohorts contribute varying perspectives of the man whilst we perceive him to still be off screen. The robbery itself carries a clever twist in that each member kills the other when his job is done, a small but highly affecting twinge to proceedings as dreamt up by The Joker thus cementing his personality and mindset in being able to cook up something such as this. As a fighter of crime, Dent lacks the physical strength Batman does but talks a good talk and is able to place a number of criminals in jail after some hard work as he adopts his own stance on the front line of crime. Shortly afterwards, it is Gary Oldman's police lieutenant Jim Gordon whom refers to him as Gotham's "white knight", suggesting the man shares a similar overview to Batman's "dark" but is just different in technique and characteristics.

Joker's parallel with Batman sees the film establish such a relationship by way of two accompanying scenes, one seeing The Joker and a handful of representatives from Gotham's gangs occupy a kitchen and talk of certain issues. Annoyingly, the representatives are your more generic bling-wielding African-Americans; well dressed Italian American mobsters and gruff, greasy haired eastern European criminals. Cut to Gordon, Batman and Dent beside the bat signal doing the exact same thing but whose discussions and ideologies obviously differ; a later pairing of sequences seeing The Joker deal with a black criminal, whom he feels ought to be working with him, in a blunt fashion just as Batman does the same to a Chinese businessman named Lau whom he feels similarly towards in this sense, thus suggesting a more intrinsic link between the two. As is the rule of thumb in films such as Heat or American Gangster, Joker and Batman share a sequence in which they sit opposite one another at a table; on this occasion, and as other sources have stated, right before contemporary issues on the treatment of terrorists once in custody have arisen.

Where the film falls apart is its want to cater to an audience with superhero sub-genre frills, an interesting parallel drawn up between Dent as a frothing at the mouth monster named Two-Face seeking revenge and Batman, as two people differently channelling anger born out of injustices towards people they love plays out, but getting bogged down with out of sorts fight scenes and ridiculous sequences in 'sonar vision' which does nothing but juvenalise adult content. Most of the second unit stuff is nowhere near as interesting as the talk and studious observations on identity and personality; a chase through a tunnel which spills onto the streets involving a police van; a large truck and a bat-bike rather underwhelming. The film relies on rife corruption all too often to further its narrative so as to send it down another avenue of twists and turns, ultimately a story which is not as interesting as all the aforementioned character studies and power play going on as binary opposites supposedly attract and everybody's linked to each other. Ultimately only fleetingly interesting, and all too often feels bogged down.