Movie Review: The Dark Knight

As faithful readers of this site will note, we generally like to title our reviews with some witty and catchy phrase rather than the generic “Review: Title” format — this helps us fulfill our need to be hip and different. It also helps set the tone for the review, giving you a small inclination as to what we thought up front. In the case of reviewing The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to 2005’s dark, re-inventive caped crusader tale Batman Begins, I have no such witty title, no such pun to earn your click-through. What I do have is a reverence for the fact that a film, for the first time this year, left me with no knee-jerk reaction, no immediate opinion to be had. In a way, it was a stunning, awe-inspiring experience — and in no way to I feel that I will be overselling it.

I would be overselling it however, if I were to call it a masterpiece, a revolutionary piece of cinema or heaven forbid “the greatest movie of all-time” — such determinations can not be made three weeks before a film is released and should always be decided by history. As well, I believe that statements like that create unreasonable expectations for great films, leaving audiences predisposed to disappointment. What I will say is that The Dark Knight is easily the most well-crafted superhero movie that I have ever seen, one that transcends genre, on a scale that is as epic as they come and with performances that will shake you to your core.


The core of the story is The Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger. He has descended on the streets of Gotham, where Batman (Christian Bale) and newly elected District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) have been able to curb corruption and mob rule, hell-bent on creating chaos wherever he goes. He is, for the first time in any cinematic adaptation, a character whose actions follow no logic, no reason other than to create havoc and plunge the city of Gotham into a state of peril.

With respect to Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, he appears to be merely a caricature of the Joker compared to Heath Ledger’s embodiment of the raw irreverence of the Clown Prince of Crime. In his first moments on screen, we see Heath Ledger, a talented actor who was lost before his prime, only to see him disappear seconds later into the character of the Joker. From there, he delivers one of the most unnervingly good performances since Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector — he becomes a truly terrifying vision of the Joker, one that challenges Batman’s sense of order and forces him to play by a different set of rules.

And between this epic battle of order and chaos is the character whose story arc is the most complex, Harvey Dent. As Gotham’s White Knight, the beacon of hope for a city on the verge of being ravaged by the mob, Dent’s story becomes the most interesting, as he is the character who experiences the most change in the film. While The Joker’s chaotic nature cuts right through the film, Dent’s story is one of great change, as he is transformed by the circumstances of his storyline, becoming something entirely different as the film moves along.