The Dark Knight is a phenomenal movie and it does live up to the hype. Since I have Batman Begins in my top ten all-time favorite movies it’s pretty obvious I was looking forward to this one, enough to actually catch it on opening weekend, something I never do. From start to finish it had me on the edge of my seat and I liked how they tied up a couple loose ends from the previous movie right away. The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan who also directed Batman Begins and was also co-written along with his brother Jonathon Nolan. They definitely took the comic book down a dark path where it’s hard to believe it’s based on a comic book.
The most important character in the movie is the late Heath Ledger, who starred as the Joker. With his performance he helped take this movie to another level of greatness. The Joker was pure evil and he continued time after time to come up with diabolical situations that left Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), Commssioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) , and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) into some very difficult and ethical decisions. The Joker wants to humiliate Batman and wants him to reveal himself to everyone and he does this by playing into the minds of the people of Gotham. All I can say is that every time the Joker was on screen, he stole the show. It’s weird to think about the Jokers of the past movies or tv shows after seeing Ledger’s performance. I thought he blew Jack Nicholson version of the Joker away.
Christian Bale again does an excellent job as Bruce Wayne/Batman, who really feels like he might not be making the difference that he wants to do to clean up Gotham. Although the scum of the city has decided to take care of business during the day in order to not get caught by Batman at night. He has to decide what kind of person he has to become to deal with killers like the Joker and it tears him up inside.
Every character brought their “A” game, especially Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart. So great that I didn’t even mind that Batman and Joker weren’t on the screen the whole time. Michael Caine again played the faithful butler Alfred to a tee, and Maggie Gyllenhaal does a pretty good job replacing Katie Holmes as Bruce Wayne’s love Rachel Dawes. Morgan Freeman returns as Lucius Fox, the man behind all of Batman’s gadgets who also has to make ethical decisions when it comes to helping Batman.
What’s great about this movie is that you really get emotionally connected to the characters and even though you dislike the Joker for what he is doing, you can’t help but love what he does for the movie. I like that they were able to bring in another famous batman villain (Two-Face) into movie without disrupting the flow. There have been other movies that try to do this and fail because there isn’t enough time for character development and it all seems just thrown together, Batman and Robin, for example. The special effects were also excellent. Seeing Two-Face was very gross, but it led to his powerful change in personality. I remember seeing Two-Face in the previous Batman Forever movie with Tommy Lee Jones, it all seems like a terrible make-up job.
The Dark Knight is a definite must see and it receives 5 out of 5 baseballs!
Filed under: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Movies, The Dark Knight
i still wish Katie Holmes had stayed on board as Rachel Dawes for the Dark Knight; it was like the time spent getting familiar with her character in Batman Begins was wasted…