Movie review 1:

The Dark Knight is the second film in the Batman trilogy and is directed by the celebrated director Christopher Nolan who has directed movies such as Memento and Inception

The Dark Knight was released on July 14th 2008. This film is an adaption of the comic book phenomenon Batman. Christian Bale stars as Batman alongside Heath Ledger as The Joker, the movies main villain.

Set in the future and within a year after the events of Batman Begins, Lieutenant James Gordon and Batman, as well as a new district attorney Harvey Dent successfully begin to round up the criminals that plague Gotham City until a mysterious and sadistic criminal mastermind known only as The Joker appears in Gotham, and creates a new wave of chaos.

In my opinion The Dark Knight is the greatest cinematic achievement that has ever been seen from the comic book genre, from both an artistic and action based standpoint.
Director Christopher Nolan delivers us a dark twisted Batman film which haunts you long after you've finished viewing.

 Overall I think The Dark Knight is one of the greatest films of all time and certainly the best comic film of all time, this is largely due to the incredible acting by Heath Ledger as The Joker which won him a posthumous Oscar, the incredible music, and the perversely and yet fascinatingly dark ideas and themes shown throughout.



Christian Bale as Batman; I think overall Christian Bale provided a very good characterisation of Batman and the best seen on screen to date. His Batman was cool, smart, and obliquely threatening, meaning there was more nuance to his ability to covey control. The only thing I didn't care for was the voice which he chose to put on while being Batman, as it sounded like he was suffering from severe throat cancer. This is an idiosyncrasy of all the films I have seen containing this character, but I thought his rendition was most exaggerated and grating. As Bruce Wayne Bale was superb, he pulled off the eccentric billionaire fantastically with conviction and aplomb and looked the part.

8/10 as Batman and 9/10 as Bruce Wayne

Heath Ledger as The Joker; This is the performance which makes this movie captivating in its intensity and turns this into the master piece it is, let's just say, scenes like this one alone show why he deserved his Oscar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8PxG5zvgOM
This is quite simply the best acting performance I've seen by any actor in any movie. He is dark, cunning, mysterious, and frightening and he makes what could otherwise have been a villainous caricature of a protagonist a curiously enticing captivatingly noir and utterly believable character.

10/10

Gary Oldman as James Gordon. Gary Oldman plays the best James Gordon seen to date and he makes you care about his character and the rivalry between him and Harvey Dent is well done by both the actors.

8/10

Micheal Caine as Alfred J. Pennyworth. Micheal Caine plays a incredible Alfred and is one of the highlights of the trilogy, he makes his presence known with funny and ironic dialouge and is always there for Batman and clearly understands him the most. I honestly couldn't imagine anyone else as Alfred. Other's have tried for example Jeremy Irons but he just doesn't pull it off as well. I think as Connery was to Bond, this performance will become synonymous with the character for all future attempts.

10/10

Morgan Freeman as Lucics Fox. Once again I couldn't imagine anyone else playing the role, his voice is just perfect for the part and he provides a moral compass for Batman as well as being his tech provider, he plays it perfectly

9/10

Aaron Ecket as Harvey Dent and Two Face. As Harvey dent Aaron Ecket did as much with the character as he could and played him well, he made it seem like he really cared about being Gotham's D.A and putting criminals behind bars, he played out his rivalry with James Gordon excellently and it was overall a good performance. However, as Two Face he was fantastic, he was intimidating and scary and seemed pluasibly obsessed with fairness and chance, and shows the multiple personalities he is encumbered with and the mixed morals and ensuing conflicts impeccably. The last scene of the movie demonstrates his ability in this role of Two Face.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGzxHBL2FhA

7/10 as Harvey Dent and 9/10 as Two Face

Maggie Gylenhaal as Rachel Dawes. I didn't enjoy Maggie Gylenhaal as Rachel, the actor was different from the first movie and I don't think she played it that well compared to the first actor. Overall it wasn't very pleasing and I thought it could of been better. She lacked a vulnerability that was plausible, and a certain crispness. One expects to be able to identify clearly what a protagonist finds captivating about his love interest, put simply, she lacked the charisma or cliche'd beauty one would generally expect, and did not have a script adequate to make up for this shortfall.

4/10



Some key themes and messages that are explored in The Dark Knight are order and chaos with Harvey Dent representing order and the joker representing chaos with Batman stradding the line between good and evil somewhere in between. There is a time in the film where popular opinion needs to be controlled, Batman is scapegoated, cast as a wrongdoer as it is fitting from a policy standpoint that someone takes a fall. He becomes hunted, and the awful tension between truth, perception, and unfairness is played out.

Good vs Evil, the play of dark vs light and the triumph of one over the other, and perhaps even their intersection is explored explicitly, but also implicitly. Though Batman is not a classic "all good" super hero, and is more a vigilante who will take extreme measures and use violence to bring about justice, he is also in dialogue with himself around what his moral code actually is, what he actually needs to do vs what he is prepared to do, and prepared to compromise to achieve it. There is also the juxtaposition of the Good, all American, handsome Harvey at the outset and the Bad Harvey at the end. Begging the question, is anyone, no matter how pure, really all good and by corollary, is anyone truly evil?

Is this notion that perhaps no one is completely evil what captures Batman suddenly and causes him to save The Joker or is it the recurrence of the decision not to break his code.  The Joker is the opposite of Dent and his pathological bent leaves him on the side of chaos with his sole, though purposeless intent is to torment Batman and create anarchy. He is not a classic criminal as he doesn't really have any purpose to what he does. As he says "Do I look like a guy with a plan?"
The Joker is Batman's ultimate nemesis, as ideologically opposed as they are physically, with Batman (and Bruce Wayne) always been sleek, methodically presented to represent order, and The Joker being unkempt, dirty in mind and body, erratic, chaotic and therefore inherently more frightening due to his unpredictability and immediately apparent depth of illness. Disconcertingly for them both, though they are polar opposites Batman see's himself in The Joker and vice versa. There's a fine line between the madness and pain who's inception births psyche's like that of The Joker and Batman. Batman is insane for the right reasons and The Joker for the wrong ones, all it would take is one slip, one loss of his humanity, for Batman to slip right into The Jokers shoes. The struggle the Batman has to traverse this line is the core experience of the character across the film.


The film, due to the cinematography, gripping, fear-filled intensity, is utterly absorbing, it is a horror filled adrenaline rush. I found it pleasingly serious compared to other super hero movies. The Joker's performance was so artfully constructed, and yet so painfully recklessly raw, for me, it's the most meaningful experience I have had of observing an actor. It was impossible to discern where the character began and the actor left off. I was a little disappointed by the lack of charisma shown by the character Rachel. In modern films, especially ones of this budget, one anticipates that the female character will either be executing an almost cameo cheesy role which they have no choice other than to do when pigeon-holed by a script, and therefore, one hopes, imbuing the role with some ironic humour, lifting the intelligence by making it's absence apparent, or, frankly, adding some weight to a film. She did neither. It was also extremely long, and when watching something that intense, and grievously disturbing in parts, 2.5 hours is a really long time.


The film taps into broader societal issues that come up routinely when governing the populance, such as, to what degree is dishonesty acceptable, even wise, when managing public perception. Is it sometimes better for people not to know the truth?
It grapples with, at great length, the intersection between good and evil. In this instance, the Joker is clearly so unwell his intent is evil, but Harvey is swayed by experience, grief, psychological agony, to morph into something other than himself. In so doing, one can mentally reference the anguish, brainwashing or other circumstantial imperatives that give rise to suicide bombers, or at least the ability for one subsection of the population to treat another one inhumanly.

The sum total of this film's parts make it utterly fascinating, but the primary one that lends it the deep gripping hold-your-breath credibility is the performance by Heath Ledger. He carries this film, lending the concept believably.  I think any man between the ages of 16 and 60 will find it terrifically difficult to feel anything other than breathlessly focused throughout. I tested the film on a couple of women, neither seemed even slightly interested, and instead squirmed miserably through the genuinely fear inducing Joker's performance and seemed quite resentful at the insipidness of the performance given by Rachel. I would rate this film at 9.7/10.




p.s The Joker's scary