The Night Is Darkest Before The Dawn

Dark Knight Review

Batman Begins was the start of something truly interesting and special; comic book adaptations that were, well good. It was mature, dark, and most importantly fun. It felt as through DC had recognised what had made Spiderman good, and what Marvel was capable of doing, taken the formula and raised the bar. With The Dark Knight, not only is the bar raised again for Comic book adaptations, it raises the bar for action films as a whole. In short The Dark Knight is one of the most impressive, hype deserving action films I think I’ve ever seen.
Christopher Nolan’s desire to keep the Batman universe cemented well and truly in reality is a stroke of genius. It make’s the struggles of all the characters involved seem that bit more realistic and believable. The portrayal of Batman, as the Dark Knight tortured by the repercussions of his actions, and the affect it is having on the people of Gotham, is perfectly played by Christian Bale. His adversary of the film and as all Batman fanatics will know his ultimate adversary is The Joker, a horrifically powerful portrayal of a man who has totally lost control is beautifully played by the late, and great Heath Ledger.
I don’t wish to divulge any specific details about the storyline, in fear of ruining even the smallest part of the experience for you. I will however make reference to the opening five minutes, and lay claim to it being one of the best opening five minutes to a film I’ve maybe ever seen, and one of the coolest introductions to a villain, EVER.
The films opening cinematography is magnificent, the establishing shot is great, and reminded me of the opening of Psycho with the camera focusing on a building amongst a city. The camerawork continues to be impressive throughout the film, as does the soundtrack, and of course the performance of all the cast, which is quite frankly star studded. Both Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine reprise their roles as Bruce Wayne’s (Batman) butler and personal technician respectively. This time however Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes, one of the film’s only down sides, I felt her performance was somewhat lackluster and below par, compared to all other actors involved.
Now for the paragraph, detailing the crucial part of the film everyone is talking about, Heath Ledger’s frankly astonishing performance as The Joker. He outshines Jack Nicholson’s performance in the original Batman film by a mile, and that sort of statement should not be said lightly. I personally love Jack Nicholson, he’s a great actor, but Heath’s method acting shines through. He creates the perfect conflict for the audience; a character so psychotic we cannot root for him, but at the same time humorous to our inner darkest thoughts. And that’s exactly what the Joker is, an agent to bring about the evil in everyone, and he does this through the characters in the film, Batman, Harvey Dent, and the characters in the finale, and most importantly as I just mentioned the audience, he is nothing short of perfect. His untimely death, could however out shadow his performance, and lead people to believe the hype surrounding this film is caused by his death, this however simply put is plain wrong. He is brilliant in this film, a blistering performance for an integral role to the film.The film, as mentioned is beautifully shot, Nolan’s use of IMAX to record some of main action sequences help make them that much more impressive. I doubt I will have the chance to watch the film at an IMAX cinema, the quality is however conveyed through a normal screen, but given the chance you should defiantly try and see it at an IMAX cinema. The ‘car’ chase, to which I will not give anything away about involving Batman’s newest vehicle the ‘Batpod’ was intense. The ‘Batpod’ was every bit as impressive on screen as it is in the screenshot that have been floating around the internet for what seems like years. The film is not constant all out action however, but the action scenes are well placed and well paced, they feel fluid and just as important as the character development and story progression.

I could continue for well ever, talking about how good this movie is, but I must refrain, I will however now talk about the downsides to this film, and believe you me, it’s a short list(if you could even call it that). As mentioned I felt Maggie Gyllenhaal’s acting was weak, compared to all the others actors involved, and a bad choice in my opinion. My only other main grip about the film was on my first (of currently two, and probably at least one more) sitting I found Christian Bale’s Deep Batman voice, somewhat annoying and hard to follow, however less so on my second sitting. Finally the running time, at two and a half hours this is an epic, but as My friend said to me afterwards ‘I felt as though 2 and a half hours was going to be too long, after two hours I felt it had wrapped up everything, then it carried on and I realised I wanted it to not go on for another half hour, or even an hour, but forever’. That sums up exactly how I felt about the film, and I genuinely have never been more excited for a sequel than I am now, bring on Nolan’s Batman Three, rumoured to be called ‘Gotham’.

9.5/10

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First Five Minutes Of The Film


NOTE- Now Updated With Added Paragraph, (I'm not entirely happy with this review) 02/08/08