Rolling Stone’s Peter Tra­vers has posted his review of The Dark Knight for us to dis­sect and envy; the first of the big pub­li­ca­tions to give their opin­ion on our much antic­i­pated sequel.

Describ­ing The Dark Knight as a thun­der­bolt that rips through a sum­mer of bland movies, Tra­vers heaps praise on the mad-crazy-blazing bril­liant Heath Ledger as The Joker. I’ve picked out the part I love the most:

The haunt­ing and vision­ary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imag­i­na­tion. It’s full of sur­prises you don’t see com­ing. And just try to get it out of your dreams

Once again the full review comes after the break. We’ve already posted an unof­fi­cial review from a well known Spaced character.

Rolling Stone Review

Heads up: a thun­der­bolt is about to rip into the blan­ket of bland we call sum­mer movies. The Dark Knight, direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan’s absolute stun­ner of a follow-up to 2005’s Bat­man Begins, is a potent provo­ca­tion decked out as a comic-book movie. Fever­ish action? Check. Daz­zling spec­ta­cle? Check. Dev­il­ish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warm­ing up. There’s some­thing raw and ele­men­tal at work in this art­fully imag­ined uni­verse. Strik­ing out from his Bat­man ori­gin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimen­sion. Huh? Wha? How can a con­flicted guy in a bat suit and a vil­lain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essen­tials of the human con­di­tion? Just hang on for a shock to the sys­tem. The Dark Knight cre­ates a place where good and evil — expected to do bat­tle — decide instead to get it on and dance. “I don’t want to kill you,” Heath Ledger’s psy­cho Joker tells Chris­t­ian Bale’s stal­wart Bat­man. “You com­plete me.” Don’t buy the tease. He means it.

The trou­ble is that Bat­man, a.k.a. play­boy Bruce Wayne, has had it up to here with being the white knight. He’s pissed that the pub­lic sees him as a vig­i­lante. He’ll leave the hero stuff to dis­trict attor­ney Har­vey Dent (Aaron Eck­hart) and stop the DA from mov­ing in on Rachel Dawes (feisty Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal, in for sweetie Katie Holmes), the lady love who is Batman’s only hope for a nor­mal life.

Every­thing gleams like sin in Gotham City (cin­e­matog­ra­pher Wally Pfis­ter shot on loca­tion in Chicago, bring­ing a gritty real­ity to a car­toon fan­tasy). And the bad guys seem jazzed by their evil­do­ing. Take the Joker, who treats a stun­ningly staged bank rob­bery like his pri­vate video game with accom­plices in Joker masks, blood spurt­ing and only one win­ner. Nolan shot this sequence, and three oth­ers, for the IMAX screen and with a finesse for chore­o­graph­ing action that rivals Michael Mann’s Heat. But it’s what’s going on inside the Bat­head that pulls us in. Bale is elec­tri­fy­ing as a fal­li­bly human cru­sader at war with his own conscience.

I can only speak superla­tives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing bril­liant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson’s broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton’s 1989 Bat­man, Ledger takes the role to the shad­ows, where even what’s comic is hardly a relief. No plas­tic mask for Ledger; his face is caked with moldy makeup that high­lights the red scar of a grin, the grungy hair and the yel­low­ing teeth of a hound fresh out of hell. To the clown prince of crime, a knife is prefer­able to a gun, the bet­ter to “savor the moment.”

The deft script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, tak­ing note of Bob Kane’s orig­i­nal Bat­man and Frank Miller’s bleak rethink, refuses to explain the Joker with pop psy­chol­ogy. For­get Freudian hints about a dad who carved a smile into his son’s face with a razor. As the Joker says, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.”

The Joker rep­re­sents the last com­pleted role for Ledger, who died in Jan­u­ary at 28 before fin­ish­ing work on Terry Gilliam’s The Imag­i­nar­ium of Doc­tor Par­nas­sus. It’s typ­i­cal of Ledger’s total com­mit­ment to films as diverse as Broke­back Moun­tain and I’m Not There that he does noth­ing out of van­ity or the need to be liked. If there’s a move­ment to get him the first posthu­mous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976’s Net­work, sign me up. Ledger’s Joker has no gray areas — he’s all ram­pag­ing id. Watch him crash a party and cir­cle Rachel, a woman torn between Bale’s Bruce (she knows he’s Bat­man) and Eckhart’s DA, another lover she has to share with his civic duty. “Hello, beau­ti­ful,” says the Joker, sniff­ing Rachel like a feral beast. He’s right when he com­pares him­self to a dog chas­ing a car: The chase is all. The Joker’s sadism is lim­it­less, and the masochis­tic delight he takes in being punched and blood­ied to a pulp would shame the Mar­quis de Sade. “I choose chaos,” says the Joker, and those words sum up what’s at stake in The Dark Knight.

The Joker wants Bat­man to choose chaos as well. He knows human­ity is what you lose while you’re busy mak­ing plans to gain power. Every actor brings his A game to show the lure of the dark side. Michael Caine purrs with sar­cas­tic wit as Bruce’s but­ler, Alfred, who har­bors a secret that could crush his boss’s spirit. Mor­gan Free­man radi­ates tough wis­dom as Lucius Fox, the sci­en­tist who designs those won­der­ful toys — wait till you get a load of the Bat­pod — but who finds his own stan­dards being com­pro­mised. Gary Old­man is so skilled that he makes virtue excit­ing as Jim Gor­don, the ulti­mate good cop and as such a prime tar­get for the Joker. As Har­vey tells the Caped Cru­sader, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see your­self become a vil­lain.” Eck­hart earns major props for scar­ily and mov­ingly por­tray­ing the DA’s trans­for­ma­tion into the dreaded Har­vey Two-Face, an event sparked by the bru­tal mur­der of a major character.

No fair giv­ing away the mys­ter­ies of The Dark Knight. It’s enough to mar­vel at the way Nolan — a world-class film­maker, be it Memento, Insom­nia or The Pres­tige — brings pop escapism whisper-close to endur­ing art. It’s enough to watch Bale chill­ingly ren­der Bat­man as a lost war­rior, evok­ing Al Pacino in The God­fa­ther II in his delu­sion and des­o­la­tion. It’s enough to see Ledger con­jure up the anar­chy of the Sex Pis­tols and A Clock­work Orange as he cre­ates a Joker for the ages. Go ahead, bitch about the movie being too long, at two and a half hours, for short atten­tion spans (it is), too somber for the Hulk crowd (it is), too smart for its own good (it isn’t). The haunt­ing and vision­ary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imag­i­na­tion. It’s full of sur­prises you don’t see com­ing. And just try to get it out of your dreams