So without further ado:
The Dark Knight
BE WARNED BEFORE YOU READ THIS: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THE REVIEW!
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale ("Bruce Wayne/Batman"), Heath Ledger ("The Joker"), Aaron Eckhart ("Harvey Dent/ Two-Face"), Maggie Gyllenhaal ("Rachel Dawes"), Gary Oldman ("Det. Lt. James Gordon")
Review: A year has passed since Batman has freed Gothma City from "Scarecrow". But in this time Batman has gone from hero to being disliked and feared. He still is trying to support Det. Lt. Gordon to catch the mobster of the city, but there are impersonaters now, who don't fight for the good cause. But a bigger problem has occured: A villain named "The Joker". He kills and robbs for no apparent reason. He just wants a better class of criminals and, most of all, to unmask Batman. When The Joker makes a deal with the crime syndicaat of Gotham City Batman faces his biggest challenge yet. To make Batman show who he really is, The Joker threatens to kill people each day that Batman doesn't show himself. And he starts by killing a judge and the police commissioner. But this time Batman has another ally: District Attorney Harvey Dent, the shining knight of Gotham. They even manage to take The Joker into custody, but he gets away and even manages to kidnap Harvey and his girlfriend Rachel, who has been Bruce Wayne's girlfriend before. The Joker threatens to blow them up and since they are in two different buildings, only one can be saved. So Batman goes to safe Rachel and Gordon tries to save Harvey Dent. When Batman arrives at the destination he has to find out that The Joker lied to him because he is at the house where Harvey Dent is tied up. Batman manages to save Harvey, but Rachel dies in an explosion. The house where Batman saved Harvey is blown up as well and the explosion ignites the oil on Harvey's face which burns his flesh to the bones.
The day after that The Joker has planted bombs on every bridge that leads out of Gotham and threatens to blow up a hospital and after that he wants to blow up more buildings. So the whole city tries to escape with ferries, but when the ferries have set off the engines stop and The Joker tells the people that he is going to blow up two off the ferries at midnight. Until then the people on board of each ferry, normal citizens on one of the ferries and prisoners on the other, have the trigger for the bomb on the other ferry. So whoever pulls the trigger first survives.
The Joker is watching all this from a nearby building. When Batman arrives at the building and manages to get to The Joker the time is up, but both ferries are not blown up, because neither of the two were able to pull the trigger. But before The Joker can pull his trigger Batman can overpower and stop him. But The Joker has another ace up his sleeve: He went to talk to Harvey in the hospital and told him that the police were responsible for Rachel's death and that he can't save Gotham. So Harvey becomes Two-Face and wants his revenge. Therefore he kidnaps Gordon's family and threatens to kill them. When Gordon arrives at the place where Harvey holds his family hostage, the same building where Rachel died, he has to choose which one of the family will die. Two-Face takes Gordon's son to kill him but Batman appears and can fight Two-Face off. Two-face falls down the building and dies. When Gordon and Batman talk about what to do, Batman tells Gordon that he should blame him for all the chaos, so that Harvey can be remembered a hero and give people hope.
Batman turns into a "Dark Knight".
Nolan's second movie of the new Batman era is propably the best movie I've seen so far this year. Everything seems to be perfect here. The effects are very impressive, but they never feel unreal. An explosion looks like an explosion and not like a chinese firework.
Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is good, yet it kind of sounds like "The Rock". But that's a Hans Zimmer problem. ever since "The Rock" most of his soundtracks sounded alike, which is not really bad, but getting boring.
The plot is the real strength of "The Dark Knight". What I wrote above is only about one third of what actually happens. A real synopsis would be much longer. There are a lot of twists and spectacular scenes in the 151 minutes which make the movie thrilling and exciting the whole time. The Nolan brothers really made a perfect job on the script.
The other big strength is the cast:
Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Michael Cane, Gary Oldman and Maggie Gyllenhaal are all very good and talented actors and all of their performances are very good to extraordinary, but Heath Ledger is the most outstanding actor in the movie.
His version of The Joker is brilliant. Beginning with his make-up over his facial expression to his his body language. Everything seems to fit perfectly. You really believe that he is mentally ill yet a mastermind. What always bugged me about Ledger was he constan mumbling, but even this he can control in "The Dark Knight" which makes him a very promising candidate for the "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar in 2009.
I've been struggling back and forth whether or not "The Dark Knight" deserves a rating of 9.4 or higher to become one of the best movies that I've ever seen. I still don't really know if it is the right choice, but I'm going to give it:
9.4 out of 10 crazy laughs
This makes "The Dark Knight" the second best movie that I've rated so far and it enters my personal "Top 10" of the best movies ever.
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