This review/movie poses a slight problem for me. I understand that to be a good reviewer, you need to separate your personal feelings in order to be a subjective writer. When the preview came out, I was dying to see this movie. So to write a review and come off neutral will be tricky. Don’t read these first few lines and think you know how the review is going to go.
The Dark Knight follows Batman (Christian Bale) as he takes on the mob and new mad man in town, The Joker (Heath Ledger). The plot can best be summed up like this. Batman puts the squeeze on the mob, the mob retaliates by hiring the Joker to take Batman out. The Joker sets out to cause as much chaos as possible and to corrupt the corruptible.
I’m going to start off by saying this movie was good. The cast was good, for the most part. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Christian Bale both then to play it a little over dramatically, but Bale is playing someone torn between two lives. So it’s kinda expected. Ledger is frighteningly excellent as the maniacal madman Joker. (and I’m not just saying that cause he died, be honest, there wasn’t a single person who could wait to see Ledger back on the screen to see what he was going to do next) My only complaint with the cast is Bale. While I think he is a great actor, it’s like he knew this movie was going to be about the Joker so he just kinda phoned it in at some points.
Looking at the movie as a whole, it’s a little disappointing. Hear me out before getting the pitchforks and gassing up the bandwagon. Look at the plot as a whole. I just summarized it in 3 sentences. A 2 and a half hour movie should not be summarized that easily. Also, how much of the movie was new? I mean in the sense of this hasn’t been done before. Cops pressure mob, mob strikes back by hiring mad man, man wrecks havoc till hero takes him down. Madman “creates” apprentice to help wreck havoc. Allow me to list the other movies that have done this. Boondock saints, Smokin Aces, and the Star Wars trilogy (the prequels). Hell if you really want to get technical, The Boondock Saints have done almost the entire plot. Excluding the whole superhero aspect. Now I’m not saying they did it better, but it’s just been done before.
There are also a couple glaring plot holes. The cops get the location of The Joker and plan to take him down. The Joker says if no one kills the innocent man on tv, he’ll blow up a hospital. Now, the cops abandon the plan to take the Joker down to clear out the hospitals and protect the guy. Why? I mean, wouldn’t it be easier to send maybe two units to pick up the innocent guy and still take down the Joker? Then not only have you saved the innocent guy, but you’ve also captured the Joker thus preventing him from blowing up a hospital. There’s a couple more, but that’s the biggest one I can think of off the top of my head.
Like I said before, this movie was good. Ledger’s Joker was great. The action set pieces flowed nicely, and pacing really seemed to pick up at the right moments. I would recommend it to anyone who asked, but I would say it wasn’t worth all the hype it got. My main complaints come from the writing. Some say I look to deeply into movies, that they are just movies. Well, we pay for the right to see these. That makes them ours. Thus giving me the right to expect alot out of them.
I am a big Batman fan and on some point’s, I must disagree. Like when you say it has been done before… well yes it has, but there is only so much you can do in a “good guy chasing bad guy” movie. What made this movie phenomenal is not so much the plot, as for the fresh breath Nolan has put in to Batman, the visual effects and the extraordinary acting performances coming from some of the actors, such as mentioned Heat Ledger. Nolan managed to bring Batman to a new level… He made him darker and more real then ever. And “real” is what I love the most about Batman, it is a realistic hero, one that could exist in our world, compared to other superheros as Spiderman or Superman. The only thing making them heroic is there super powers… ha, try finding that in our world, the real world.
But there is one point I definitely must agree on with you, and I am happy to finally see some one who shares this opinion with me. Christian Bale! Every one seams to love him in the role of Batman. Yes, he has the clean billionaire look, he has that sad disturbed look in his eyes. He has all this going for him. But does he really have what it takes to pull off Batman. In my personal opinion, No! I already disagreed with his cast in the first movie “Batman Begins”, I felt as tho he was pretty much invisible. But then in the Dark Knight, when placed next to The Joker!? I am sorry to say, but Heat Ledger ate him alive and his Oscar was well deserved.
I know, writing a review on a movie you love must be hard.
Well I’ll admit I think Christopher Nolan will go down in history as the greatest director of our time. “Batman Begins” was just a absolutely unquestionable masterpiece. Yes he did make him more real and reality based. Just my issue with this movie was more or less the hype on how great the story of it was. I just felt it was a little underwhelming for all the hype it got. Now I know it was all because of Ledger’s ‘The Joker’. I am interested to see what the next one does.
The Dark Knight Rises, which is coming out Summer 2012 and will be his last Batman movie, which means that it will be AMAZING.
Huge batman fan,loved Begins,but this is overatted and an hour too long,nolans gotham is too bland a place to need a batman,and as for the so called agent of chaos joker whose every move is planned to the nearest coincidence,well hes just not funny.
I thought that both of Nolan’s batman features were amazing, and that he has crafted the greatest superhero film series ever because of his reboot.
Agreed that it’s to long. Since when do we need to have 2 villains per superhero movie? I wouldn’t say the Joker’s plan work on coincidences, but it’s pretty obvious the cops decide to take the easy way out of everything.