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Intensely thrilling and impeccably acted, The Dark Knight is one of the best movies to be released this summer. Despite its lengthy running time, it rarely strays from keeping the audience engaged, and it is a lot more intelligent than several films of its kind. Christopher Nolan and a stellar cast bring us a very good piece of cinema that is every bit as effective as the film that preceded it. Both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight represent the most insightful and successful take on the Caped Crusader ever committed to the big screen.
As much as I'm not always fond of agreeing with majority opinion, there's no avoiding the truth: Heath Ledger is absolutely the highlight of this film, to the point that the movie sometimes even feels like it loses some of its steam whenever The Joker isn't on-screen. Prior to watching The Dark Knight, I was definitely skeptical of the hype over his performance. This wasn't because I don't believe he was a great actor. Of course he was. He gave incredibly devastating performances in Brokeback Mountain, Monster's Ball and Candy, and he's also practically unrecognizable in his role in Lords of Dogtown, much like his equally unrecognizable work here as The Joker. But I was skeptical about all the praise because I feared it could just be sympathetic hyperbole due to his passing away last January. I was quite relieved when I realized this wasn't the case, upon watching the film. While one could argue with those who are giving the film accolades of masterpiece or best superhero film ever or the solution to all of the world's problems, there is NO arguing that what Ledger does here is a work of genius.
The face-painted villain is enthralling and great to watch from the very first few seconds he appears on camera. There's irony in terms of the fact that, although he certainly conveys a relentlessly terrorizing menace, he also does live up to his name in that he provides several laughs to the audience (at least it did for the audience at the midnight showing that I attended on Thursday night). These laughs, however, are obviously more of a result of the evil, sadistic humor that we also got from Javier Bardem and Michael Pitt's respective villains in No Country For Old Men and Funny Games (speaking of those two and of Ledger, what a wonderful last few months it has been for films with great villains). Another thing that I found to be ironic was that The Joker, anarchist fiend that he is, claims that he never makes any plans and/or organizes anything: "I just do!" Yet he certainly comes up with several ingenious and well thought-out schemes throughout the film.
There's not a single qualm to be had with any of the performances, all of which range from excellent to very good. Aside from Heath Ledger, I thought that Gary Oldman was also great as Lieutenant Gordon, and that he's not necessarily getting as much credit as he deserves (his character is also far more important to the film than we might initially guess). Aaron Eckhart has a tough job with the crucial role of Harvey Dent; he's not great, because he does go over the top sometimes, but considering the difficulty of playing this character, he's certainly very good. As they did in Batman Begins, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman bring the same level of class that they always bring to films they star in (Caine's Alfred, in particular, is great at serving insight often with a side of humor). Supplanting Katie Holmes in the role of Rachel Dawes, Maggie Gyllenhaal neither helps nor hurts the role of the girl who got away from our hero. Many people made gross exaggerations about Holmes' performance being terrible, which it wasn't. She did well with what she had to work with, and so does Gyllenhaal. The only negative remarks I expect people could make about the acting is that Christian Bale doesn't get much space to really act, since he's usually wearing the mask. Although the hype will certainly continue focusing on Ledger, Bale is (yet again) fantastic whenever the mask does come off, and it's a shame that he may not end up getting as much recognition as he deserves.
The Dark Knight takes several twists and turns that will keep people on the edge of their seats and that make the film a constantly enjoyable experience. In particular, more than one important character dies during the film, leading to a great deal of surprises (at least for me, since I didn't read any spoilers prior to seeing it, even though it seems several people did). The film only has a few drawbacks. As I mentioned before, The Joker is indeed the highlight here, and the problem is that there are times that, when Ledger's terrifying specimen isn't on-screen, nothing we're watching is anything we haven't seen before or anything that would lead me to view this as the groundbreaking film many are hailing it to be. A great performance doesn't necessarily translate into a great film; Javier Bardem was excellent as Anton Chigurh, but his performance was only ONE of the many things that made No Country For Old Men great. In addition, while the majority of the action sequences are very well-choreographed, the most important ones (which come in the last act) are edited a bit choppily, and I DON'T think this is necessarily due to a lack of competence by the editors, but rather the consequence of a film that tries to coalesce a lot of characters and plot elements into a final cohesive action sequence, and that makes this all a little more disorderly and overwhelming than it should be. Speaking of the film's final act, I must note that the "social experiment" that takes place (compliments of The Joker, of course) is very, very interesting; I won't say much about it, so as to not spoil things for those who haven't seen it (but beware to keep reading if you haven't), but those who HAVE seen it obviously know that I'm talking about the conundrum with the two ships. Unfortunately, interesting as it is, the flaw with it is that the outcome is exactly what we've come to expect from superhero movies. A character says "Let me do what you should've done 10 minutes ago," and he then does the opposite of what the audience thinks he's going to do; sure, the surprise is nice, but since this twist that leads to a positive outcome feels like such a conventional contrivance for a film of said genre, I guess it's disappointing in some senses, ESPECIALLY considering the darker undertones the film aims for. Still, none of these minor drawbacks take away from what is definitely a largely superior entry into the superhero film realm.
Is it the best superhero film of the year? Possibly. I've given a 7 to both this and Iron Man, though this is certainly a more complex film. However, "more complex" doesn't always mean "better" because complexity isn't the only important consideration in evaluating a movie, and in my case, I enjoyed both equally. Is it the best superhero film of all time? I can absolutely understand why a lot of people would think it is, and I certainly don't think there's much I could say to debate it, but on the level of personal opinion, I have more appreciation for the first two Spider-Man films (the second of which is one of my all-time favorite films), and also for the second entry into the X-Men series (X2: X-Men United). That said, though, The Dark Knight is definitely better than the first X-Men movie, the two Hellboy films, the two Fantastic Four films, and it is a heck of a lot better than Superman Returns and than both of the third entries into the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises, both of which were serious disappointments considering what both franchises had accomplished with each of their first two entries. One can only hope that this won't happen if Nolan and his team decide to do a third film.
Although WALL-E still remains the best film to be released in what has, thus far, been a relatively unimpressive year for cinema, The Dark Knight is right up there as one of the most well-crafted cinematic offerings we've had in 2008. I don't think it is suitable for younger audiences that aren't ready for the darker themes it touches upon, but it is incredibly good as a source of entertainment for older teenagers and adults. A lot of hype has surrounded Heath Ledger's performance because of the fact that he died recently, but the truth is that his praiseworthy turn in The Dark Knight is unforgettable, NOT because of his untimely death, but because it is one of the most haunting villainous performances I've ever witnessed, sure to stay in people's minds long after the credits roll.
7/10
