"The Dark Knight," Christopher Nolan’s grim and brooding sequel to his 2005 reboot "Batman Begins," is perhaps the most scintillating and incisive film about our current state of affairs to hit the big screen since the “war on terror” began. While numerous filmmakers (Paul Haggis, Kimberly Peirce, Irwin Winkler) have attempted to make films that address the dark minefield of the American psyche via the war in Iraq, their over-earnest and literalist approaches have driven audiences away and underwhelmed critics, which is why Nolan’s metaphorical approach feels so right. The war for the soul of the fictional Gotham City -- waged by a madman who “wants to see the world burn,” a conflicted self-made hero whose attempts to inspire the people are continually backfiring, and a “white knight” whose steadfast belief in the inherent functionality of the justice system causes his ultimate undoing -- is a frighteningly effective mirror for the world today.

Scripted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, "The Dark Knight" is laced with the depths of thematic aspiration that can catapult a summer tentpole into the realms of the mythic. So many films now are adapted from comic books, and it seems like all of them come with some form of attention-grabbing emotional and social baggage, from the obvious ("V for Vendetta"), to the awkward ("Hulk"), to the romanticized ("Spider-Man 2"), to the carefully refined ("Iron Man"). 

The question of how far Batman will go to fight injustice -- essentially, how much power can one man have and still maintain his humanity? -- is one of "The Dark Knight’s" underlying philosophical questions, which is all the more intriguing given that the film’s injustice takes the form of a lunatic who is so unhinged that he cannot be understood in conventional terms. The only way we can make sense of real-life terrorism is to link it to a cause (religious doctrine, ethnic wars, the desire for control, etc.). But what happens when terrorism exists simply for its own sake? We have become so inured to the notion of true evil by the rhetoric of the “war on terror” that we’ve lost sight of how the most frightening thing of all is that which escapes the terms by which we seek to define it.

"The Dark Knight" is both a brilliantly nihilistic, incredibly dark and richly layered filmgoing experience. It is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 153 minutes.