REVIEW: The Dark Knight - No spoilers or lies (or bad jokes) this time.

Here (in italics) follows a not so brief history of how we got to this point. Feel free to skip.

In 1938, National Publications (later to become DC Comic) was looking for a follow up character to their hugely successful Superman superhero. Bob Kane, a writer, came up with the idea of "The Bat-Man". The early undeveloped character was pretty much just a man who dressed up as a bat and shot bad guys. It wasn't until later that he evolved into the brooding playboy and gadget packing vigilante that we all know.

In the 50s, having introduced the "Robin" to the comic, the comic was in trouble for homoerotic undertones This is what is widely is thought to have led to the creation of Bat-woman and Bat-girl as if to say...IT'S OK.....HE'S NOT A GAY, YOUR CHILDREN ARE SAFE.

In the 60's a TV series was made starring Adam ("somebody's stealing my water") West. By today's standards it's ridiculously camp and absurd but at the time cynicism hadn't been invented and so the series was success.

The 70's, after the end of the TV series, DC comics tried to shake off the image of The Bat-man as the Camp Crusader by making the stories darker. However this had limited success and by the mid 80's the comic sales had reached an all time low.

In 1989 Tim Burton, fresh from the success of Beetlejuice, was hired by Warner Brothers to make a Batman movie. His stubbornness in casting the comedic actor Michael Keaton in the casting role put off fans of the series. However the film, backed by a huge marketing campaign, was a commercial and critical success and led to the sequel Batman Returns (1992), also by Burton.

Despite the success of Batman Returns, Warner Brothers decided that the films were too adult and gothic under Burton and replaced him with Joel Schumacher for the third film - 'Batman Forever'. Keaton was replaced by Valerie Kilmer and Burton's favorite film score composer Danny Elfman was replaced by a chap called Elliot Goldenthal , who once did the music for Demolition Man. Robin was introduced, Two-Face/Harvey Dent was chewed up by Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey was hired to be zany and Nicole Kidman was the tits-interest. Batman Forever was rubbish....but it made money, so we got a 4th - 'Batman and Robin' in 97'. I haven't seen this because by 1997 I was old enough to have taste and sense.

The gash-a-thon of Schumaker's Batman sequels pretty much killed off any interest in making movies about men in batsuits for nearly a decade.

What the franchise need was a new start. It desperately need a big fat needle full of depressing realism. Where better to look for this than the home of rainy Sundays, cancelled trains, tutting, pessimism, grim cafes, burnt down seaside piers and big sighs.

Yes, Britain and Ireland. The most "real" places on the planet. Step forward Christopher Nolan. Step forward Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy and Tom Wilkinson.

Batman Begins (again) came out in 2005 and was a commercial and critical hit. By starting the series a fresh it gave the young director Nolan a chance to put his take on the comic. Whereas it's predecessors had relied on action set pieces and two dimensional villains to carry the story, Nolan's Batman Begins was more a of a character study on Bruce Wayne and how he becomes the Batman. Rather than trying to make a comic book which was a good entertaining film, he tried to make a good film set in a real world which just happened to have the story and characters from the comic. Everything had to be explained and if it wasn't possible, it was cut from the story.

That pretty much brings us up to date and to the release of the widely anticipated sequel to Batman Begins - "The Dark Knight".

The film starts with a set piece bank robbery as exciting and clever as anything I have seen in cinema in recent years. It introduces Heath Ledger's "Joker" superbly. In Nolan's Gotham, the Joker is a John Doe, a sweaty, hyperactive, fanatic anarchist whose face is caked in peeling paint and who wants to expose the contradictions of people who try to be good (apparently this is pseudo-Taoism). Through acts of terror he hopes to create a world of chaos in Gotham. Unlike the Jack Nicholson's Joker, we are given no clear back story behind Ledger's interpretation of the Joker. He even gives two conflicting stories to explain his scars, which run in a gruesome smile up his cheeks perhaps inspired by the main protagonist in the Asian extreme film Ichi the Killer. The Joker's crimes are not caused by a desire for money, power or infamy unlike normal villain but by an obsession with an ideology. There is even a wonderful scene in which he burns a giant pile of money to demonstrate this.

Another character which is introduced is that of Harvey Dent, the city's up and coming district attorney and competition for Batman in more ways than one. His incorruptibility and refusal to brake the law infuriates the Joker as it directly contradicts his beliefs.

Christian Bale returns as Bruce Wayne / Batman, ready to hang up his batwings and pass the job of ridding the city of organised crime onto Harvey Dent. An interesting connection is made with the Roman Republic's use of a anti-democratic dictatorial system which was reverted to in times of civil emergency. This appointed one man to protect the city. Having done this, the protector was meant to then restore democracy and step down (this didn't always happen though). As the war against crime in Gotham seems to be being won at the start of the film Bruce Wayne muses whether it is time for Batman to step down and allow the democratic law, and it's new white knight, Dent, to take over.

Gary Oldman returns as Lt Gordon and is fantastic. In fact the film has as much to do with his character as it does with Batman. Whereas Dent is idealistic incorruptible lawman, and Bruce Wayne is the vigilante working outside of the law for the concept of "good", Oldman's Gordon is the realist in the middle who has to openly denounce the lawless Batman, whilst all the time relying on his actions. This conflict is repeated when Dent discovers that Lt Gordon's staff included officers with muddy pasts, but who get the job done. Nolan gets great mileage out of this and I feel that it is one of the most interesting aspects of the film.

Whereas the recent rash of comic book adaptations (The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, The Hulk (again), SpiderMan3, Iron man and Hancock) were severely lacking in brains and relied heavily on special effects and lots scenes of things hitting things and blowing up, "The Dark Knight" is idea heavy and is over-burdened with concepts. On top of the usual Batman themes of dark and light, vigilantism and the drawbacks of democratic judicial systems the film explores torture, mass-surveillance, terrorism (the Joker's ideological fundamentalism is juxtaposed with shots of firemen walking through the rubble of blown up buildings), there's even a sequence exploring game-theory (the ferry bit).

The supporting cast is so impressive; Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal that it actually manages to sideline Christian Bale. It seems that you can have too much of a good thing.

Having said this, the performances are faultless, the script is well written and the action sequences are fantastic.