Sometimes folks look for trouble. And sometimes trouble comes a callin', all on its own.

For a while, it seemed as though life in Gotham City was looking up. Gotham's finest, led by straight-arrow Lt. Gordon, was squeezing the city's crime syndicates. Harvey Dent, a new and fearless district attorney, stalked the courtrooms. Batman prowled the city's darkest alleys. Mob bosses stopped meeting at night, afraid they'd be pinched.

What? A city where crime kingpins are afraid of the dark?

Then - like the flu, like a hailstorm, like a crowbar to the side of the head - comes the Joker. No baggage. No back story. No greedy motive. Just a leering, cackling demon of chaos. He crashes a high-level mob meeting and offers his services as the city's very own bat exterminator. What does he want? Nothing. Everything. What does he ask for? Half the mob's money.

So begins perhaps the deepest, bleakest summer blockbuster ever, an explosion-riddled saga about order and anarchy, about good and evil, and about the line we draw between the two.

:: Review
The Dark Knight is a complex film with a myriad of messages. But at its most basic, the question it poses is this: To what lengths do good people go in order to conquer the worst sort of evil? Must they become a little evil themselves along the way?

It's a pesky truism our heroes struggle with from the get-go. None of them escape unsullied. But it's when they refuse to compromise that the movie soars. The most heroic guy of the bunch (go figure) is Batman himself, willing to sacrifice everything that's precious to him for the sake of the city. He never, ever kills, and he rigidly keeps this special vow even when the Joker more than deserves death.

Truth be told, The Dark Knight is not gory. The carnage here is felt, not seen. But oh, how we feel it. The Joker is as horrific a villain as I've ever seen onscreen - an embodiment of nihilism, a manifestation of pure, unapologetic evil. The camera may blink, but your mind's eye doesn't. The Joker forces us to imagine every cut and tear. Frankly, I think I squirmed more through Knight than through the splatter-happy Saw IV. Why? The violence here feels more real, visceral ... painful.

That said, I'm not going to detail every bit of violence seen onscreen in this not-really PG-13 movie. Batman pummels dozens of folks, but you knew that would be the case before you started reading. There are car chases, crashes and explosions aplenty, but you knew that, too.

What you might not know is that the Joker kills scores of folks, and all the death that surrounds him only seems to brighten his mood. Counting casualties doesn't convey how you might feel as you watch, and how you'll feel walking out when it's over. So I'll put things this way: The Dark Knight is not Iron Man, not Hancock, not even Hellboy II. This is a movie about a cartoon hero. But there's nothing cartoonish about it.

Without a doubt,  The Dark Knight is mesmerizing and thought-provoking. It's guaranteed to become a critical darling while scooping up a bazillion dollars at the box office. But its dark side cannot be ignored. The Chicago Tribune leads its review with this warning: "Sensational, grandly sinister and not for the kids." The New York Daily News tells us, "The PG-13 rating seems tame; this sucker is rough." Yes, it's undeniably well-crafted. But it's a harsh creation, and by all rights shouldn't have been named after the good guy. The Dark Knight is the Joker's court, and he's not looking for a laugh.

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