The Dark Knight

It’s quite easy to review The Dark Knight. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, an absolutely incredible film. In its 152 minute running time, it packs in enough action, drama and sheer, unadulterated awesomeness to be spread across three films, and for each one to still be great. That’s how much happens in The Dark Knight. That’s how much jaw-dropping excellence this movie oozes from its every frame.

Christian Bale returns as our eponymous hero, as do Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Lieutenant Gordon and Morgan Freeman as Fox, while Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. There are two big additions to the cast, of course, in the form of Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent and, of course, the late Heath Ledger as The Joker. Let me be clear on one thing, right from the start: Ledger gives an outstanding performance, right from his wonderful entrance which sets the tone for his character perfectly. His constant twitching and apparent lack of any sense of self-preservation creates a sense of deep discomfort that permeates every crevice of the film, and his actions are all based around one simple concept – all it takes to reduce a society to flaming embers is to show its citizens that there are no rules. He is, as he so neatly puts it, “an agent of chaos”, a terrifying antithesis of civilised society. A man who kills, mains and destroys for no other reason than because he can.

But to write off The Dark Knight as merely Heath Ledger’s performance would be to ignore two other stellar performances, from Bale and Eckhart. Bale is superb as Batman, filling the characters requirements in a manner previously only achieved by the voice of Kevin Conroy in Batman: The Animated Series. Eckhart gives probably the most underrated performance of the film, but turns in a truly great performance as Harvey Dent, brilliantly capturing the fatal slide from the idealistic sense of justice and right to the darkness of revenge and retribution that he embodies.

It is difficult to make this review anything other than a list of platitudes, but then again, the film deserves them, as it truly is a masterful work from every angle. The design and feel of the film is, once again, every piece as wonderfully gritty and dark as Batman Begins, while Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard do a wonderful job on the score, with the film opening to a dull whine, difficult to determine whether it’s dialectic or not, that gently gets louder and louder, bringing with it a wonderful sense of brooding unease that perfectly suits the film’s tone.

So, to surmise – The Dark Knight is easily the best film I have seen this year (with seemingly only WALL•E, which I have yet to see, standing any chance of besting it), and rightly deserves to take its place among the greatest films of all time, a testament to the power of film to tell a story and a reminder of the potential for awe and wonder that it can create. Superb. A+.