The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight (2008)



Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart

Other Actors of Note: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Eric Roberts, Anthony Michael Hall, and Nestor Carbonell

Plot: Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the city streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as The Joker. Taken from www.imdb.com.

The Joker as portrayed by Courtney Love

Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is trying to clean up Gotham City, if he succeeds it could mean that there's no more need for Batman, something Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) happily accepts. But a new criminal mastermind known as The Joker (Heath Ledger) will make it as hard for both as he possibly can.

"I simmer with generic rage!"

Christian Bale as before proves that he is the best Bruce Wayne that the character has ever seen. However his Batman voice (which sounds like he has strep throat with a side of throat cancer) which was at best ignorable and at worst hilarious in the first film is between is horrific in this film and at times hard to understand. Here's a transcript from one scene:

Batman wannabe: "What's the difference between you and me?"

Batman: "IM NOB WERRING HOGGY PABS!!!" (I'm not wearing hockey pads)

One of his final speeches sounds like Batman is about to sneeze. So as the series progresses it appears that Bales "scary" voice will be the campiest thing Batman has ever done this side of the Batusi.

Aaron Eckhart works very well as Harvey Dent, though having only the memory of Tommy Lee Jones' performance in "Batman Forever" to compare it to, it's not hard to top that. Still Eckhart is good, except for toward the end which I can't mention to great extent without spoiling.

Of course Heath Ledger is the big star of this movie and ensures that everybody regrets his untimely death. The Joker is the sickest version this side of Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" and "Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker." He manages to actually be funny in a very dark way, from the point when he "makes a pencil dissappear" after, I was mystified with his performance.

Gary Oldman gets more of a chance to shine this time as James Gordon. Though he is absent for a large portion of the movie, what he is in makes great use of his time.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is this movie's weak link of this movie. The character of Rachel Dawes was always un-neccesary in the first movie where she took much needed screen time from Gary Oldman, but at least with Katie Holmes as the chracter she was well acted. Gyllenhaal tries to seem charming and funny but comes across more like she's a dumpy 30-something housewise with an abusive husband. Fortunately we don't have to put up with her very much.

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are more of the same, Anthony Michael Hall is wasted as a newscaster, Eric Roberts is pretty okay as a mob boss, Cillian Murphy makes a cameo reprising his role as Jonathan Crane from the first film, and Nestor Carbonell A.K.A. Batmanuel from Fox's "The Tick" plays the mayor, which is awesome.

Normally when a man dressed all in black leather and a cape stands behind another man wearing smeared make-up it means something entirely different.

Batman is a hard-core crime thriller that just happens to feature Batman. Some claim it tries too hard (which in the case of Batman and Eckhart's latter performance I would agree) but it does very well, far surpassing the mediocrity that was "Batman Begins."

Much like with "Hellboy II" the problem is that the title chracter has relatively little tiem in his own movie. This is more a Harvey Dent/Joker movie than a Batman movie.

Of course it makes up for this with a well-done and entirely new type of comic book film. For all intense purposes "The Dark Knight" is a movie like "Heat" with a slight superhero theme. To be quite honest it's an R rated movie that is made PG-13 only by the fact that it never actually shows a single drop of blood despite all the incredibly violent content.

Ultimately a lot of the same mistakes that were made with "Spider-Man 3" are made here. The movie tries to take on too much at once which manages to work for a little bit but by the time we've passed the 2 hour mark the film becomes a bit tedious and a storyline that should have been saved for another movie is tacked onto the last hour. Of course the movie manages to overcome it, but Christopher Nolan still seems to be flying a bit close to the sun with this one.

Also the speech at the end, while profound, is still pretty cheesy and reflects the one delivered at the end of Daredevil a bit much.

"Brum. Brum. I has a motorbikes!"

"The Dark Knight" is probably the most original, entertaining, and well put together movie since "Spider-Man 2" and though it's not perfect and has some glaring flaws in design it's still a shockingly good movie.

I give "The Dark Knight" a 5 out of 5. It doesn't quite live up to the hype but it's close enough.