Review: 4 out of 5
Best Scene: Any scene with Joker
I finally got to see what all the hype is about and I can say with confidence The Dark Knight does live up to the hype -sorta. It’s like The Carter 3 of movies in 2008, some things are really good and some things are really cheesy. But let’s first get into the good of the movie.
The Good
Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker is pretty damn good. I was skeptical that he wouldn’t be up to par with Jack Nicholas in the very first Batman movie, but he came through with a different take on The Joker which proved to be a wise choice. Ledger’s Joker is more psychotic and deranged, and he comes off as like the Hannibal Lecter of comic book villains.
Christian Bale’s take on Batman is similar to what’s going on with the new Bond movies in the sense that the protagonist is a superhero without the frills and namely the cheese (something the Austin Power’s movies spoof). Overall Bale’s performance is on point, the only thing that bugged me about Bale’s acting was his overly gruff voice when playing Batman. What the hell was up with that?
The storyline is typical comic book stuff, but what makes the story so powerful is how each character deals with the concept of good and evil. As the movie goes on it becomes more clear that each character and even Gotham city itself is teetering between total anarchy and a progressive liberal democracy. Of course there is also the symbolism of post 911 terrorism thrown in which asks movie goers how should we deal with a terrorist that cannot be bought? It’s all heavy political philosophy that will go over the heads of most of the morons that watch the movie but the enlighten nerds should stay grinnin’.
The cinematography is breath-taking which should make this something you want to get on Blu-ray.
The score is very gangster. This isn’t one of those comic book movies where you have a song from some cheese ball rock groups, everything is straight Hans Zimmer.
The Bad
No killing. What kind of dark movie has no one visibly dying? I know they wanted to make this film PG-13, but the lack of visible death in the action scenes made me feel like I was watching power rangers. They better put out an R rated version on DVD.
I wish they made The Joker even more crazier -like he should have eaten some brains and raped a girl or been responsible for the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents or something. I didn’t feel any hate toward him as one should toward any movie bad guy, in fact I was kinda of routing for him.
This ties in with the no killing and may be a spoiler, but Joker doesn’t die. WTF? How can the bad guy not die? Is this power rangers? I was so expecting Joker to fall of a building and then when he hits the floor that crazy Joker laugh goes off like in the first Batman -that would have been so OG.
