Maybe you’re somebody who has no qualms when hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on a movie that amounts to a couple great chase scenes and a rock ‘em, sock ‘em fight with the hero’s girlfriend tied to some time-sensitive death contraption. But I always feel teased. Like I just got back from a date where my interest was exploited for a free meal. The Dark Knight is a diamond in a mound of cubic-zirconia gemstones, two and a half hours of blockbuster at it’s finest, a movie worth the price of a concert ticket.

Please, allow me to clear my head of my immediate reactions: The Dark Knight is the shit! It is so awesome I can not stare into the light of its awesomeness without seeing spots. Better than I hoped–and I was hoping for a lot–there were even points where I sat looking at the screen thinking, “Can Christopher Nolan (writer/director) possibly sustain my amazement any further?” The answer: Yeppers, and with a choke-on-its-way-down ending. I’ll shut off the blathering even though I want to keep going.

Christopher Nolan does what I wanted Jon Favreau to do with Iron Man. Kick ass and kick more ass while always staying a step ahead of me (Heath Ledger as The Joker is as mystifying and sensual as Hannibal Lecter). Then–so I don’t feel he just took my money for a couple great chase scenes–he knocks me in the head. When I walked out of the theater I couldn’t balance out the world. I laid awake in bed rethinking the Iraq war based on something a guy in a bat costume said, and that’s when I knew I’d gotten my money’s worth.

Tonally, The Dark Knight picks up right where Batman Begins left off. The soft, sour notes in the concluding refrain of Batman Begins have grown in volume. The closing of the first movie suggests that donning a cape and mask to inspire fear in the ruthless and hope in the innocent has, in fact, unlocked the frenzied fantasies of Gotham’s sociopaths, which crescendos in the opening bank heist of Dark Knight. Heath Ledger’s Joker is so exceptionally twisted and brilliant, I can imagine casting agents boycotting future assignments to cast comic book villains. He’s a sociopath, a terrorist and he’s totally magnetic. If The Joker weren’t killing people, he’d make the perfect role model: Resolute, determined, brimming with self-confidence and unshaken by the material things of this world. He’d be a monk on his way to sainthood, if only he didn’t live to see the world suffer.

There is no effort to explain where The Joker comes from, except for his own self-made mythology which changes whenever he tells it. Nolan won’t offer false comfort in “understanding” where The Joker comes from, but just the reality that some evil cannot be explained and must be faced. Gary Oldman returns as James Gordon (minus the befuddled old man in the Batmobile antics, thank god). And Maggie Gyllenhaal has replaced Katie Holmes as district attorney Rachel Dawes (again, god, thanks). Aaron Eckhart takes a prominent role as “The White Knight,” D.A. Harvey Dent, a surprisingly worthy double for Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale). Harvey Dent and The Joker orbit Batman like protons and electrons vying to change the very molecular makeup of our hero, and they do.

Take all the brilliant action of the first movie and give it the psychological sparring up there with Anton Chigurh and Sheriff Bell in No Country for Old Men. It’s an art film with comic book heroes to geek out on. Ah, how refreshing for the hero to be challenged so far beyond his nemesis having a bigger, better contraption! The Joker is a spirit, a moral contaminant awakening uncomfortable admiration and shame over our silly values. He’s the most compelling defense for water boarding. Like a walking Sophie’s Choice, his sole purpose is to strip away any pretense of nobility and reveal what humans are truly capable of when only given the choice to kill or be killed. He’s Batman’s true nemesis because he preys not on Batman’s body, but the very hope he has in his city and the people in it. For us, he’s the enemy we won’t let ourselves believe in.

I’m still thinking about it.