Christopher Nolan has completely surpassed "Batman Begins" with his latest outing of the masked vigilante. This is no mean feat, as "Batman Begins" was widely hailed as the best Batman movie ever made when it came out in 2005. Now, the torch has been passed to "The Dark Knight."
"The Dark Knight" has been thrust into the public eye ever since Heath Ledger - who plays the Joker - was found dead in his Manhattan apartment from an accidental prescription drug overdose in January. For the last six months, many have wondered how Ledger's final performance would play out. The answer is brilliantly.
Heath Ledger delivered a phenomenal performance as what should now be considered the definitive cinematic rendition of the Joker. In every scene, the viewer can't help but forget that Ledger is hiding underneath all the screwy makeup. The insanity of the Joker is perfectly portrayed here, in a way that even Jack Nicholson's performance in 1989's "Batman" cannot hope to match.
The rest of the cast may not have had an easy time keeping up, but somehow they did. Christian Bale remained true to form as Batman, as did Gary Oldman as James Gordon. As they were already perfect for their roles in "Batman Begins," they really didn't have all that much room to grow.
There were two surprises this time around. Aaron Eckhart will probably never emerge from the shadow Ledger left on this film, but his performance as Harvey Dent/Two-Face was almost as good as Ledger's Joker. He perfectly plays a man whose world gets destroyed along with his sanity.
The other surprise is Maggie Gyllenhaal as assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes, who fit the role so well it would be nice if we had a time machine so we could go back and ask Nolan to cast her instead of Katie Holmes in "Batman Begins."
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As a character study, "The Dark Knight" is one of the best ever filmed. The viewer can really feel the emotions of every character - or, in the Joker's case, the absolute and total insanity. Harvey Dent's descent into madness is so perfectly sympathetic that no one with even the tiniest shred of empathy could help but be moved by his plight.
"The Dark Knight" owes a lot to the graphic novels of the '80s and '90s, especially to Frank Miller's magnum Batman opus "The Dark Knight Returns" and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's "The Long Halloween." Those graphic novels were largely responsible for reviving the dark mythos of Batman and permanently burying the campy stupidity that Adam West's Batman left in the American psyche. Without them, the dark flavor of "The Dark Knight" could not have been taken seriously.
While the cinema-watching public is never going to get to see Ledger's brilliance in a Batman film ever again, hopefully the legacy of "The Dark Knight" will allow for a third film - and, hopefully, we won't have to wait too long for it. In the meantime, comic fans of the world will have to make due with a couple of films that had trailers before the feature played - "The Spirit" on Christmas Day and "Watchmen" in March 2009. If Hollywood keeps this up, people might actually start taking comics seriously.
"The Dark Knight"
Grade: A+
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