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The Dark Knight will make your jaw drop. And Heath Ledger’s performance is only part of the reason.

This summer in film has been one for the times, particularly for comic junkies—Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Wanted and Hellboy II were all successful in transposing their comic origins to celluloid, while simultaneously making their release studios happy by cranking great box office numbers. But the summer wouldn’t be complete without Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the sequel to his muscular renovation of DC’s age-old black-caped hero, Batman Begins. The second film in this strapping franchise darkens the territory (much thanks to Frank Miller’s inspired graphic novel miniseries Batman: The Dark Knight Returns), introduces two of our hero’s most illustrious villains, charters philosophical terrain that’s never been addressed in any other hero movie (be it of the sci-fi, action, or comic-book kind), and, thus, surpasses its predecessor (and every film so far this year) in terms of magnitude, entertainment, and evaluation.

With new district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) having joined forces against unlawful activity in Gotham City, Bruce Wayne, his gadget-maker, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) just about have everything under control. And then the Joker (Heath Ledger) shows up. With no previous knowledge of his existence (aside from a “calling card” he left at the end of Begins), Batman and his crime-fighting bunch have little to use against the Clown Prince of Crime. On the contrary, while the good guys gather what they need and make slick upgrades—the only thing cooler than the caped vigilante’s new suit is his new ride, the Bat-Pod—to fight their vicious foe, the Joker is and has been very busy pursuing his central goal, which is to “upset the established order” with anarchy and chaos. And once that chaos breaches Bruce’s morality, the fight for supremacy in Gotham is on like fat on fries.

Chris Nolan’s cast glimmers in a film that has enough action and ingenuity to survive without it. Christian Bale is ferocious, digging to the core of Bruce Wayne/Batman’s psyche and adding more emotional depth to his all-too-human character than has ever been present in a superhero movie. Michael Caine is again tremendous as Alfred, while Freeman and Oldman maintain humor and insight without gravely expanding their roles in 2005’s series lift-off (though Oldman’s given more face time, a plus, and adds an intense emotional wallop in one of the film’s climactic scenes). But we all know how Bale and his Begins costars fit into Nolan’s dark Batman universe—more perfectly than a puzzle. Therefore, most viewers’ attentions will be focused on the newbies in TDK (in particular, Ledger). That said, they don’t disappoint in the least.

Playing Rachel Dawes, Gyllenhaal glows with energy and liveliness, a festive replacement for Katie Holmes (whose cockeyed smirk still makes me twitch), and Eckhart is sensational as Gotham City’s DA, whose compassion/personality flips from good to bad like a coin (he becomes the baddie Two-Face) after one of Joker’s gleefully sadistic murders forces him over the edge. But each actor is outshone here by Heath Ledger (surprise!), whose involvement has had fanboys (and, especially, girls) drooling since the initial casting confirmation in early August of ’06, and has, in short time, lured the interest—which, sadly, but undeniably, was heightened by his unfortunate death in January—of just about everyone with a television set or radio.

His performance scorches the screen, and he fires his lines with the kind of devilish verve that will haunt your sleep. His Joker looks, acts, and talks like a by-product of Hades’ own demonic forces—the flesh around his wicked grin is gashed, scarred, and smeared with lipstick, his smoldering peepers are encircled by a heavy layer of black shadow, his hair is greased and matted with faint hints of green dye; he struts around Gotham with an eerie, confident posture, the limp duck in a group of clown caricatures; and the manner in which he speaks is heinous and sinister, yet deliberate and calculated, like a hyena on Adderall. As simply as I can say it, Ledger’s a damn riot! Not a move he makes, not a pitch in his voice, not a twinkle in his eyes is received as anything less than captivating.

Forget the hype surrounding this role, for the final creation defies even the most vibrant of imaginations—and, trust me, it’s a creation that would have Turing, Edison, and Tesla stricken with envy (it’ll certainly get Cap’n Jack Hollywood chapped—his incarnation, seen in Tim Burton’s comparatively cartoonish Batman, is but a foggy memory in the wake of this reinvention). As far as I’m concerned, the Oscar belongs to Ledger, who’d only be the third person in history to take home a statuette posthumously (Sidney Howard won the Oscar for Best Screenplay in 1940 for his work on Gone With the Wind and Peter Finch won an Academy Award in 1977 for his role in Network). And if he doesn’t win, there will either be hell to pay or film audiences will have witnessed a performance more deserving of the award (and, unless Daniel Day-Lewis is eligible for consecutive Oscars for his performance in There Will be Blood, the latter is very unlikely).

The film’s production value is…well, invaluable—production designer Nathan Crowley and first art director Mark Bartholomew construct a grainier, more detailed Gotham City (which emerges from the base of Chicago’s building structure) than previously seen, while cinematographer Wally Pfister captures its small beauty and substantial realism through appropriate lighting and proper framework. (Six mind-blowing sequences were also filmed with IMAX cameras, including the opening bank robbery, a chase scene through the underground streets of Gotham, and a sweeping shot of Batman atop a skyscraper in Hong Kong, off of which he dives, taking viewers on a breathless plummet.) Moreover, the score, tag-teamed by legendary composers James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer (who worked together on Begins and have 13 Oscar nods and one win between them) is insistently foreboding, and the script (by Chris and his brother, Jonathan) is exceptional, permeating every level of humanity’s ethical compass and exploiting its most dire and hopeful outcomes with grave concentration.

The Dark Knight is a multifaceted, artistically manufactured motion picture that has no flaws (that I noticed) and bites like a bat out of hell. Its 152-minute runtime will fly by quicker than Nolan can turn a masterpiece (which TDK is, unquestionably), and once the final credits roll, you’ll almost definitely want another helping (I certainly do!); and you may need one as well—the initial shock of the feature’s punch is heavy enough to conceal portions of the burning detail in Nolan’s craft, which is a marvel to see in its all-encompassing scope.

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