The newest Batman movie, The Dark Knight, managed to attract not only a massive worldwide interest, but it was greeted with great reviews from the movie critics.

The newest movie in the Batman series is expected to become the biggest blockbuster of the summer, with Christian Bale playing the haunted caped crusader and the late Heath Ledger with an intense portrayal of Batman’s enemy, the Joker.

Directed by Christopher Nolan, the movie outshines its predecessor, bringing new dimensions to the story, with a carefully detailed script and the use of IMAX technology. The rush induced by the huge action scenes, combined with all the gadgets and the excellent performances of the movie’s two main actors, will not leave anyone dissatisfied.

The movie also introduces District Attorney Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, who starts off as a day-time crime fighter, heating things up with the wrong-doers of Gotham City. He will later accidentally transform into the revenge-minded Two-Face. Besides him, there are also present the knight’s police force contact Jim Gordon, played by Gary Oldman, Wayne’s faithful servant Alfred played by Michael Cane, Wayne Industries technical manager Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Maggie Gyllenhaal taking Katie Holmes’s place as Rachel Dawes.

The symbolism of the movie relates to the fragile line between good and evil which can easily lead to a radical direction change.

Heath Ledger’s performance has been praised by many with good reason, as he managed to deliver one of the best villain portrayals ever, which has even led to rumors about an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Metacritic.com has combined a rating of 82 for The Dark Knight based on 36 reviews.

Justin Chang from The Variety has described the move as “an ambitious, full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity, […] a seriously brainy pop entertainment that satisfies every expectation raised by its hit predecessor and then some.”

“Though not as obsessively detailed as “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight” shares with that film a robust physicality and a commitment to taking violence seriously,” Chang concluded.

Kirk Honeycutt from The Hollywood Reporter noted that “"Dark Knight" revolves around notions of the yin and yang between Hero and Villain and of those gray areas where social conscience and individuality collide.”

“Repeat viewings might also be a necessity. That adrenaline rush comes at a cost: With the film's race-car pace, noise levels, throbbing music and density of stratagems, no one will follow all the plot points at first glance. Not that the story with its double crosses and ingenious plans isn't clear, but to enjoy the full glory of these urban battlefield strategies, multiple viewings are required,” he concluded.

Richard Corliss from Time has given a wonderful description of the part played by Heath Ledger.

“This villain, as conceived by Nolan and his scriptwriter brother Jonathan and incarnated with chilling authority by Ledger, is not the elegant sadist of so many action films, nor the strutting showman played by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. He isn't a father figure or a macho man. And though he invents several stories about how he got his (facial and psychic) scars, he's not presented as the sum of injustices done to him. This Joker is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history”, Curliss wrote.

Even the famous movie critic Roger Ebert was impressed by Nolan’s movie and rated with four out of four stars.

“Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production,” Ebert wrote.

Ebert also greeted the remarkable performance of Ledeger. “The key performance in the movie is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker. Will he become the first posthumous Oscar winner since Peter Finch?”, Ebert said.

Claudia Puig from USA Today is also thrilled by Leder’s The Joker. “Actors are sometimes described as "disappearing into a role." Never was that term more fitting than in the case of Ledger. To go from the taciturn ranch hand in Brokeback Mountain to the randy philanderer in Casanova to the mid-career Bob Dylan in I'm Not There to the embodiment of comic book evil is a stunning trajectory. With his cracked white pancake makeup, black-rimmed eyes, smeared lipstick and greasy, greenish-tinged hair, The Joker bears no resemblance to the strikingly handsome actor who played him. In fact, the character is like nothing we've seen or heard before,” she noted.

RottenTomatoes.com, another movie reviews aggregator, has compiled a score of 94 percent for “The Dark Knight” based on 161 reviews. The movie has 151 positive reviews and only 10 negative.

But maybe the description of what is “The Dark Knight” was given by Kenneth Turan from Los Angeles Times.

“To see it is to understand that Nolan and his co-writer brother Jonathan saw a chance to go deeper into familiar characters and mythology, a chance to meditate on darker-than-usual themes that have implications for the way we live now,” Turan concluded.