If you read my Batman Begins blog post, here, you know that I already love the two movies in the Nolan series. And compared to the original movies....well there is no comparison, the first one alone blows them out of the water. The Dark Knight is no exception to the love. This movie is nothing short of astounding and for now should be in the class of greatest superhero movies of all time.
We open this sequel with The Joker (Ledger) robbing a bank in Gotham City. He kills all of his accomplices and gets away with a ton of loot. We cut to Batman (Bale) and now Lieutenant Gordon (Oldman) discussing the inclusion of the new district attorney, Harvey Dent (Eckhart), in their plans to help Gotham City. Bruce decides to throw a party to endorse Dent to gain favor in the people's eyes and help campaign funds. Dent is dating a familiar face in Rachel Dawes (Gyllenhaal), Bruce's childhood friend. Meanwhile mob bosses are having a meeting and are informed that businessman from China, Lau, has taken all the money as precautionary measure to keep Gotham from taking it. The Joker crashes the party and says that there is no place Batman can't go and the only real way to get things back on track, so to speak, in Gotham is to kill the Batman. The mob bosses laugh at him as he says he'll kill Batman for half of what was taken and one of the mob leaders put a hit on him. Fast forward and The Joker is brought to said mob boss, presumed dead, but is playing possum. He kills the leader and assumes control of all the organization. He informs the people of Gotham, through a video tape of him torturing a man, that he will start killing people everyday until Batman reveals his identity. Batman has overcome this new threat to Gotham in The Joker, while managing to keep his identity unknown and protecting the people from dying. But to do this he must become the watchful protector, the silent guardian, the Dark Knight.
This movie is damn near perfect in my eyes. I could single out Heath Ledger playing The Joker perfectly or Bale as Batman, or Oldman as Gordon or anyone who acted in this film. They all did a phenomenal job. Heath made me crack up at times, Bale is still this unnerving presence, Oldman commands the screen whe he's on. Same with people like Caine and Freeman. You can do no wrong. Then there a flip side adding people like Eckhart and Gyllenhall in. While not commanding the screen they brought much needed emotion to the film. Not saying no one else did, but there are a few very "tear-jerky" scenes in this superhero movie. The story is amazing from start to finish and once again this well over two hour movie never drags or feels long. The dialogue is both humorous and heart wrenching and the monologue by Gordon to close was just awesome. Like in Begins there is funny parts, the obvious serious parts, and a range of happiness to terror throughout. You could not keep the better part of a full ensemble add a few people in a do a better job than this. Though I do hope Rises aspires to this level.
Once again these fight scenes are fantastic in this movie. I seem to be starting this fourth paragraph with that fact, but it is. They are still brutal and they still show-off Batman in hand to hand combat well. Yet again I'm wondering if this series inspired Batman Arkham Asylum/City. Cause when Batman starts using the sonar scanner in the hostage building it feels A LOT like Detective Mode in the games. Either way I love all the new gadgets, suits, and vehicles. Also again the huge chase scenes aren't over done. There are explosions, and flipping cars and trucks, etc, some maybe unnecessary, but you can't blame The Joker for having a flair for the dramatic. Some men just want to watch the world burn. See what I did there? Once again Nolan does a great job of incorporating the Batman universe into this. he brought back the important people (Batman, Alfred, Fox, etc), there were cameos from the first movie (most notably Scarecrow) and added in the new SO well (The Joker and Harvey Dent). Everything melded well and you would think this full cast had done a full movie like this before. I love it.
In all honesty this has been the first one-two punch of a trilogy that I truly enjoyed both movies out of. I really liked Spider-Man 1/2 as well as SAW 1/2, X-Men 1/2 were pretty solid as well. But none to this scale for me. These are two movies that are great. This movie alone is great. These are superhero movies that don't FEEL like superhero movies. I love that because the genre is so watered down. I'm happy that there are still people, like Nolan, who just want to make good films. The Dark Knight is one of those films.
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