Dark Knight Movie Review

Are you scared yet?!

Howdy all. Hope everyone had a great weekend. I sure as hell did after seeing “The Dark Knight” Friday night with some friends. I hate when people ruin movies for me so this review will be spoiler free, so lets just jump right in.

The Dark Knight picks up where the last Batman movie, Batman Begins, left off. The city of Gotham has been inundated with criminals who escaped from the town’s insane asylum. The crime rate in the city is on the decline however due to the vigilante work of the Batman, played by Christian Bale. This tranquility however is not meant to last as a new villain has emerged to disrupt the order of things. Enter the Joker, played by Heath Ledger. The Joker is a sick lunatic who unlike his mob counterparts is more interested in chaos than he is money. In a much less interesting subplot, Aaron Eckhart plays Harvey Dent, the city’s new District Attorney who is working with Batman to rid the city of crime but who draws the attention of the Joker and is caught in the battle between the two. Commence intricate battle sequences and special effects that we have all come to love in superhero movies.

What sets this movie apart, and really this franchise, from other superhero movies is its attempt at realism. The whole fantasy of Gotham City being policed by a masked vigilante seems plausible thanks to the writing and direction of the Nolan brothers. Batman has no superpowers, if anything radioactive touched him he would probably die just like any of us*, but he does has a very relatable love for his city and disdain for crime. This realism draws one into the characters and makes you concerned about their outcome more so than one would for another superhero movie.

How about now?

The other thing that separates this movie from its summer-blockbuster pears is the performanceof Heath Ledger as the Joker. The best way to describe Ledger’s version of the Joker** is absolutely terrifying***. From the makeup to the laugh to the affinity for knives, the Joker is what a villain should be, evil. Nolan saw fit not to give the Joker a back story which only adds to his ghoulish persona. We don’t know why hes doing what he is doing other than the fact that he is crazy. Money doesn’t motivate him, women, glory, nothing – just pandemonium. The movie simply is not the same when he is not on screen. While I love Tim Burton’s Batman incarnations, Batman and Batman Returns, and while I also love Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker in those movies, in my humble opinion, this Joker is the greatest movie villain ever! Heath Ledger’s performance alone is worth the price of admission.

Now on to the bad stuff. Maybe it was because the AC in the theater I was at was broken, or maybe it was because the movie ran for over 150 minutes, but gotdamn was that a long movie! I like my movies shorter in general, but I can stand a long movie if the culminating scenes are spectacular and The Dark Knight simply failed in this regard. The final battle between the Batman and the Joker wasn’t really a battle at all, and the introduction of another villain in the final 2/5ths of the movie just added to the run time. Batman himself was disappointing as I found myself not caring about him much halfway through the movie. The character the Nolan’s spent the majority of Batman Begins developing seemed flat and uninteresting, any further character development was almost completely ignored by the script.

With all that said this was a great movie. I give it 4 and a half (ill think of a better rating system soon) stars out of 5. I will definitely be plopping down another $9.50 to see this flick again.

*Im looking at you Incredible Hulk

**As opposed to Ceaser Romero’s version

***Terrifying as in if I met him in a dark alley I would run the other way