When "The Dark Knight" was announced earlier this summer, I had my doubts it could ever live up to the hype surrounding it.

Much of this hype revolved around the accidental death of young actor Heath Ledger who passed away shortly after the film wrapped.

Even though the film had the same basic core creative team of director Chris Nolan and writer David S. Goyer as its predecessor, "Batman Begins," I had to wonder if it would be even as good as that revamp of the Batman franchise.

Another factor was this summer's brilliant "Iron Man" by director Jon Favraeu, which was the best of the superhero/comic book inspired movie genre to date. "Iron Man" set the bar for comic book movies, as you did not have to know anything about the character to enjoy it, and if you did know the mythos, it did not offend the true fan.

I can honestly say however, that if "Iron Man" set the bar with a new standard for such films, "The Dark Knight" has easily pole vaulted even higher.

For one thing, "The Dark Knight" manages to stay true to its comic book roots, yet it comes across as a realistic drama, not too dissimilar from such early 1970s crime dramas like "Dirty Harry" or "Bullet."

Basically the new film starts out with a disgusted Batman (Bruce Wayne) who feels he is failing in his crusade on crime. With rulership of Gotham's crime community up for grabs a group of armed men in home-made Batman suits are out fighting crime in ways Batman himself does not approve.

Also there is a new player in town, a bizarre and uncannily clever terrorist who calls himself "The Joker" (Heath Ledger) who is preying upon Gotham's underworld himself by robbing mob-owned banks.

Batman and Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) have been working together to trace money from illicit gun and drug running back to these banks, which the Joker has been robbing, in the hopes of following the money trail back to the various crime lords utilizing Gotham City.

Gotham's gutsy new attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) admires Batman's courage and tries to get Gordon to introduce him to his hero. However, Gordan is reticent because the corrupt officers in his own department despise Dent, whom they referred to as "Two Face" when he was an Internal Affairs inspector.

Soon, Batman, Gordan and Dent are working together. Meanwhile the Joker has stopped praying on the crime lords and has convinced them to hire him to stop Batman. The Joker begins to play a cat-and-mouse game with the Caped Crusader, where he threatens to kill innocent people until Batman comes forward and unmasks. The ghastly clown begins preying on innocents in the hopes of making Batman (Christian Bale) come forward.

Bruce Wayne (Bale) is beside himself with remorse and grief over the Joker's terrorist actions and Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine in the film's most brilliant performance) tries to console him with a story of his own past, when the faithful butler was a commando in Burma, dealing with a similar terrorist.

Wayne has another problem on his hands. While he admires Dent's courage and honesty and integrity, he has a problem with the fact that Dent is now dating his boyhood love, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllinhall). This romantic triangle will lead to the greatest tragedy in a film so filled with irony and tragedy it makes a Greek Drama look like a sitcom.

Dent comes forward at a press conference claiming to be Batman and gives himself up. The Joker winds up being captured and jailed which leads to one of the films more intense sequences as Gordon leaves the room when the Joker smirks about playing good cop, bad cop.

Unfortunately the Joker doesn't realize Batman is already in the room and he is worse than any bad cop in movie history. Batman begins beating the Joker remorselessly, only to realize to his own horror and disgust that the Joker is truly insane, and that he doesn't care about things like pain or profit, only his demented schemes and plans.

For the Joker has decided to drag not only The Dark Knight down to his own level, he plans on breaking the will of the three men closest to Batman in his war on crime.

The criminals who have hired him also find out much too late that the warehouse full of money they thought they could hire the insane clown with doesn't mean anything to the wheedling creep. He has other objectives in mind!

For his part, Batman wishes to hang up the cape and cowl and let Harvey Dent take over as Gotham's "White Knight" who will work inside the system to clean up the crime and corruption that have tainted Gotham City.

"The Dark Knight is a powerful and haunting and tragic film filled with fantastic action sequences (which eschew computer generated graphics) for old school stuntwork and some truly phenomenal performances by some of the top actors in Hollywood, including Caine, Oldman, Bale and several others. It comes across as being "real," not movie. As one of my friends noted, "there were times when I really worried about the future of some of the main characters, even though I knew it was a Hollywood movie."

And it's true. You never know what to expect next. A strong story, beautiful visuals, intense adventure and several psychological examinations of the nature of good and evil add up to the most intense film of the summer so far.

Bruce Wayne must come to grips with his own values in that he refuses to kill anyone, and deal with a crazed terrorist whose primary goal is not to destroy Batman physically, but to force Batman to kill him in order to rescue the people who mean the most to him.

As great as "Batman Begins" truly was, "The Dark Knight" is a quantum leap forward.