From the opening minutes of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, I immediately shed off the feeling that I was in for watching a “superhero” movie. If there is a movie that can truly be labeled as transcendent, it is this most brilliant sequel that elevates itself to an epic crime story as well as a deeply heartrending tragedy. The superhero genre’s moral, emotional, and philosophical capacities have been rewritten.

The 2005 Batman franchise reboot, Batman Begins chronicled the journey of Gotham City billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in the aftermath of his parents’ murders and his ultimate decision to channel his anguish over that loss into a determination to put away the city’s criminals and clean the streets. The Dark Knight puts that decision to the ultimate test with the introduction of The Joker, who is played by the late great Heath Ledger in one of the most nerve-wracking villain performances ever. What makes him more menacing is that he crafts diabolical situations that build into ethical tightropes that cause the Batman and others to question and perhaps compromise their very own core values to protect the city. The Joker is no longer clownish or jocose but, as his entrance with the disappearing pencil trick firmly establishes, he is just plain scary.

Batman himself is already drawing massive scorn from Gotham’s citizens who believe he is nothing more than just another vigilante despite that he has worked closely with good cop, Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) to clean up the streets. The Joker is disgusted at how the mobsters fear their days may be numbered and, contrary to Bruce’s initial surmise that he must be looking for the quickest advantage, his only purpose is to inject pure criminal evil into the city and humiliate all those who uphold justice including Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Bruce’s technology guru and Wayne Corp’s board director, District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes from the first film). As Bruce’s loyal butler, Alfred (Michael Caine) says to Bruce, he is one of the “people who just wants to watch the world burn.”

Such a storyline could tempt the filmmakers to make the movie into an overt villain-oriented showcase, which was the crucial drawback of Jack Nicholson’s flashy version of the Joker in Tim Burton’s original Batman. The poetically written screenplay by director Christopher Nolan and his brother, Jonathan makes sure that Ledger’s rendition occupies just the appropriate amount of space in the overall terrific ensemble and canvas. Every performance is exceedingly good from Eckhart’s Dent finding his moral rectitude progressively scarred by tragedy to Gary Oldman’s Gordon who must deal with the increasing emotional toll of remaining the sanest and most upstanding cop in the city. All of this, of course, leads back to Bruce Wayne on whose face, as portrayed by Bale, we can see the psychic trauma this new, unexpected breed of crime is causing as he finds himself capable of doing things he never thought he would do.