MinorityReporter

As with all my favorite movies, I find it hard to write a review of this movie because I am afraid I might not do it justice. I am normally very stingy with the score 10 because I can usually always find something that I both like and dislike about any movie but I will now attempt to justify why I think The Dark Knight deserves this much coveted score.

First of all, the main reason this movie is as good as it is, is Christopher Nolan. Nolan is not necessarily a believer in the term which plagues so many sequels, "Bigger is better". But he knew that he would have to up the ante for this one and the best way of doing that is to bring in the only character who can give the Batman pause, The Joker.

Christian Bale returns as The Dark Knight (the first actor since Michael Keaton to return as Batman) and Bale is every bit as good as he was in the first movie, deepening the character and giving one of the best performances of a career filled with some great acting. Batman being quite a stiff character doesn't allow for a lot of showing off but Bale uses his eyes as portals into the man beneath the mask with great effectiveness. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman return in their respective parts and both are excellent. Gary Oldman is thankfully given more screen time and more relevance to the story and being the great actor that he is does not shrink from the challenge, giving us a hard but sympathetic portrayal of Jim Gordon. New arrivals count Maggie Gyllenhal (a vast improvement over Katie Holmes) and Aaron Eckhardt who delivers a tragically fantastic performance as Harvey Dent. The true showstopper is of course the late, great Heath Ledger. Ledger understood that The Joker character is greater than the sum of any actor who portrays him and as such what we see on screen is not Heath Ledger but rather the increasingly psychopathic being otherwise known as The Joker. I have rarely seen an actor become a character so fully that it chills me to the bones.

There is always something at stake in every scene in this movie and Nolan, who personally directed every scene in the movie, made sure that every character who appears on screen have some sort of purpose or relevance to the story. It is a complex drawing and may well be one that requires repeat viewings to fully understand. Also the action, because you better believe there is action, is very character oriented and thus becomes increasingly tense for the audience to watch unlike so many other action movies. The editing is flawless and helps to draw the audience into the fantastic action sequences.

The action on screen is helped along greatly by Hans Zimmer's fantastic score, while very similar to the one he did for Batman Begins there are a few noticeable differences. The Joker score makes my skin crawl because it kind of reminds me of nails on a blackboard and the heroic Batman theme, used only a few times to great effect, is one that can truly make goosebumps break out all over my body. Truly a great score, that is already being copied for various other inferior action movies.

The story is multi layered and one of the main reasons that I can just keep watching. Thematically, we're really watching three abstracts fighting each other on screen, Order (Batman), Chaos (The Joker) and Chance (Two-Face) and these abstracts are behind every action the three character make and adding layers to the lines they deliver.

Overall I would have to award this movie with the label Best Movie of All Time, simply because I enjoy it so much but watching The Dark Knight is an experience that deepens every time I watch it as something new always pops off the screen. Calling it a superhero movie almost seems like mislabeling it, as it is so much more.

10/10

After departing from the screen in 1991 with Batman Returns, the dark brooding Batman has been sadly absent (the less said about Joel Schumacher's Batman movies, the better). However, after rejecting Darren Aronofsky's vision of Batman, citing that his ideas were too dark, Warner turned to the able, if somewhat unknown young director Christopher Nolan. What an excellent idea!

Nolan brought the darkness back to the Batman character but chose to stick closer to the original comics and the result is nothing short of stellar. What he gave us was not only the best Batman movie (at the time) but also one of the best action movies of the 00's. Nolan had the vision that this movie should be for the Batman character, what Superman (1978) was for its title character. A truly larger than life movie with a mammoth cast. Did Nolan fulfill his vision? Yes, and then some.

Christian Bale gives us a nuanced and humane portrayal of The Dark Knight and being the master of subtlety that he is, his portrayal can stand repeat viewings. He brings both great credibility as well as humour to the character and is physically the first actor to truly fill out the iconic suit. He is supported by an unbelievably great cast. Michael Caine is fantastically likable as Alfred and the great Gary Oldman has done another of his patented transformations and truly becomes the character of Jim Gordon. Other great actors such as Ken Watanabe, Rutger Hauer and the always dependable Morgan Freeman fill out the other minor characters with great success. Special mention is reserved for Cillian Murphy (runner up for the character of Batman), Tom Wilkinson and Liam Neeson who all do spectacular jobs with their characters. They seem to having a lot of fun which more than rubs off on the audience. All in all a stellar cast.

Soundtrack-wise Nolan did another stroke of genius in getting Hans Zimmer as composer. Zimmer is in my honest opinion the best composer in the business today and his score for the Batman movies are filled with passion, darkness and intensity. I have a lot of nostalgic love for Danny Elfman's score for the first two Batman movies but I have to admit that Zimmer has him beaten hands down.

In terms of telling the story Nolan can't resist his trademark of jumping in time. But it is done in such a well-rounded fashion that the viewer never lose track of where we are in the story and his efforts to base the Batman character in a much more realistic universe pays off in spades as the villains actually seem to be a genuine threat to The Dark Knight. One could argue that the films' main weakness is that it takes it a long time to actually get Batman on screen and get the story moving forward but I think that the pacing is brilliant and that the origin story is told with a lot of thought and a lot of love for what Batman will eventually become.

Visually the film is very akin to Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Blade Runner and the constant darkness of Gotham city help to underline the increasing darkness of Bruce Wayne's mind as well as the theme, fear.

All in all Batman Begins is arguably the best Batman movie out there. I, myself prefer the much hyped sequel The Dark Knight but one cannot overlook this movie's obvious qualities.

9/10

1. Cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as a scientist and have him spout nothing but one-liners for the entire movie. I cannot stress how bad his performance is. Even by his standards the level of acting is shockingly poor. Also Mr. Freeze was an intelligent guy in the comics then it doesn't do to cast a guy who can't even speak American without a heavy accent. Despite Schwarzenegger's intellect (he is one of the governors in USA with the highest IQ) he comes off as an ignorant person because of his accent.

2. Allow George Clooney to play Batman as gay. I am actually a fan of Clooney but his performance in this movie is disgraceful to say the least. He has stated himself that he found it amusing to play Bruce Wayne as gay. I, a great fan of the comics, did not find this amusing at all.

3. Move away from the serious tone of the first movies (which made them successful) and do a poor imitation of the 60's camp show with Adam West.

4. Cast Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. I usually think Uma Thurman is hot but her overacting in this movie is so distasteful she loses all kind of sexual appeal, which in turn destroys any kind of menace the character should have had. Poor, poor, poor.

5. Allowing Joel Schumacher free reins over the movie after seeing which direction he was taking the franchise with the previous movie. This is just the sign of a bad producer.

6. Remove all tension in the fight sequences by dumbing them down to the point where it is beyond stupidity. Batman and Robin playing hockey with a diamond is not my idea of a cool fight scene. Several fight scenes actually had me gasping with shock as to how poor they are.

7. Cast Alicia Silverstone as a bad girl (Batgirl). She cannot pull it off.

8. The nipples people. THE NIPPLES!!! How ridiculous is this?! Batman and Robin's suits have nipples but when Batgirl makes her entrance notice the lack of the same.

9. Write a script that makes no sense whatsoever.

10. Turn one of the most memorable villains of the comics into a brainless henchman. I am referring of course to Bane who in the comics is one of Batman's worst enemies because of his strength and intellect. Bane has actually beaten Batman on several occasions and although The Joker is undoubtedly Batman's nemesis Bane isn't far off. I squirm with the way they treated him in this movie.

In my honest opinion this could in fact be the worst movie... no scratch that... worst thing man has ever created. So with that I give my final score.

1/10