No joke: Batman's latest plods toward predictability

(C) The Dark Knight is a handsome, accomplished piece of work, but it drove me from absorption to excruciation within 20 minutes, and then it went on for two hours more. It's the standard-bearer for the school of comic-book movies that confuses pompousness with seriousness and popular mechanics for drama. It's scaled to be an urban epic about the deterioration of hope and possibility in Batman's hometown, Gotham City (standing in for all Western cities), but there isn't a single stirring or inspired moment in it.

By Michael Sragow

July 17, 2008