I can finally respond to the many readers, friends and acquaintances who have asked me what I think about the latest Batman movie, this year’s runaway box-office smash, “The Dark Knight.” While I enjoyed the slam-bang exercise, as a complete film it doesn’t quite measure up to the poetic grandeur of its predecessor, “Batman Begins.”

For one thing, despite its long running time, there’s a curious lack of character exposition -- the story seems unnecessarily compacted into a breathless series of mob executions, which gives the narrative some real bite, but also deadens and limits the scope of the tale, making some of the lead characters seem remote compared to the depth of human exploration mined in the first film.

There simply wasn’t enough to go on to engage in Harvey Dent’s tale; even less of any real emotion between him and former Batman flame, Rachel Dawes, who’s played quite unconvincingly by Maggie Gyllenhaal, failing to best the lightweight performance turned in by Katie (Cruise) Holmes in the first film. Consequently, the dynamic that later drives Dent to no good struck me as contrived and plot driven.

I also thought the film, taking on as much as it did, should have been longer; compressing so many tense standoffs into the sometimes jagged editing process made some of these sequences feel perfunctory, though no less so than director Christopher Nolan’s incessant use of aerial shots. Nor was I impressed with the rushed tone of many of the brief interludes between Bruce Wayne and Alfred, Jim Gordon and Dent, Dent and Dawes, or even those between Wayne/Batman and his childhood love. All of this contributed to “The Dark Knight” coming across more as an episode than an epic like the first film. Put another way, "Batman Begins" had a distinct beginning, middle and end, whereas "The Dark Knight" seemed like all middle.

Don’t get me wrong: on the four-star scale, I’d rate “The Dark Knight” a very solid three stars, and I won’t hesitate for a second to add it to my collection. I also liked the fact that Batman was used merely as a device to flesh out and set up The Joker (rather than the other way around), with the crazy clown clearly the star of the show.

Heath Ledger’s performance was spectacular, and even after one viewing (I always reserve final judgment until I’ve seen a film twice), I can say that his stint as The Joker was the greatest villain ever mustered in the annals of comic book cinema, perhaps the finest of any genre. “The Dark Knight” is positively alive when he’s on screen, with a performance for the ages and one worthy of an Academy Award (veteran Gary Oldman was also terrific as soon to be Commissioner Gordon).

“The Dark Knight” remains a fine piece of filmmaking, but its lapses, including a long closing sequence in which the special effects are merely recycled from 2003’s “Daredevil,” and its small serving of personal intrigue hold it back; something that simply does not occur in the film’s fantastical re-launching.