In a Huffington Post piece called “No Country for Batmen,” Washington Post editorial assistant Alex Remington says that “it turns out [that The Dark Knight is] closer to the bleak Westerns that cleaned up at the Oscars this winter than to the candy-colored creampuffs that we’re used to seeing in July, a bleak cry of despair cloaked in the garb of a comic book action movie, No Country For Old Men with a Batmobile.
“In many ways, it’s the feel-bad movie of the summer: it’s hard not to stare into Ledger’s eyes and come away profoundly shaken. Though in the end good emerges at least slightly victorious — a temporary armistice against the forces of darkness — it’s one of the least happy endings for a mainstream American action movie in quite a while.”