As promised, my review of the movie. Since I don’t like removing spoilers, I’ve hidden everything with a “more” tag. If you want to avoid spoilers, then just ignore my post. If, on the other hand, you don’t mind, then please click the read more link:
In all, I give the movie a score of 9.5 out of 10. I’ve never seen a movie that’s been a perfect 10, and while I don’t expect to see one in the near future, The Dark Knight is the closest anyone’s come in my book.
First of all, I truly enjoy a good hero movie. The idea of a “hero” appeals to all of us — we all envision a life for ourselves and fight with reality to pursue our “dream” with every breath we take. Those of us who are truly successful find a way to either align our dreams with our realities or find a way to just embrace reality along the way. Heroes in media are similar — they have a role they want to play in life but are forced, through a super power or some undeniable sense of a higher calling, to fill another.
Hero stories are a beatiful thing, and The Dark Knight didn’t disappoint. Here is a hero truly at odds with himself — the life he wants is impossible so long as his hero persona is needed, and neither is dispensable. It’s painful to watch Bruce Wayne fight with Batman in Batman Begins, and the inner battle is no more resolved in the new film. The introduction of Harvey Dent as a real-world alternative to the dark and mysterious masked vigilante is refreshing … until you remember what must ultimately happen to Dent as the story carries on.
The Joker is all everyone hoped he would be, and much more. Heath Ledger was cast perfectly for the role and delivered a character so horrifying that it gave even me, a long time attendee of midnight horror films, nightmares! I can’t really say much more about the part, it was just amazing. The character, though, I can speak about. Having a villian with absolutely no origin, no motivation, and no conscience is, well, beautiful in a way. In the world of heroes, everything has an opposite: a bad guy to match every good guy. By creating an entity as utterly evil as the Joker, the story allows for Batman to become just that much better. There needs to be an opposite to the Joker and it means there is room for growth in the story.
There are a lot of people who either didn’t like the film or who thought that the lengthy dialogue scenes were too much. Those people, I think, missed the point of the film. The point was to reaffirm Batman’s status as a symbol for good and introduce Harvey Dent as a good person — these are difference concepts. Harvey can (and did) fall from grace and become a villian, Batman cannot. With out the dialogue scenes establishing this, though, you’d miss it entirely.
I would be more than willing to re-watch this show in the future … many times. Feel free to give me a call if you’re headed to the theater!
