The Dark Knight's villain may be a psychopath, but his tools are all too chillingly familiar: the thirsty knife, the patient bomb. (This is not a film for children, and the MPAA should be ashamed of its PG-13 acquiescence.) ... Nolan wisely minimizes the use of CGI (even when the semi is flipped), and the difference is palpable.
In the end, The Dark Knight is less a film about good versus evil than about order versus chaos, a morality play into which a wild card, the Joker, has been inserted to devastating effect. ... But despite the tensions between its form and its function, The Dark Knight succeeds far more than it fails, and lingers provocatively in the mind.