Just Short of Perfection

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2008)

Without a doubt, this is the best superhero movie ever made. It can and should be the movie by which all other superhero films are judged.
The movie succeeds because it is beautifully shot, because the characters are all life-like (which is astonishing, as this is a superhero film after all!), and because of Heath Ledger's performance as the joker.
Wally Pfister (The Prestige, Batman Begins, Memento) is this movie's cinematographer, and he succeeds in immersing the viewer in Gotham. In none of the other Batman movies did Gotham seem like a real city. In The Dark Knight, Gotham resembles New York City (even though it was shot in Chicago), as it does in the comics. Batman was conceived as a dark character, and Pfister and Nolan shoot him in the dark, always in the shadows, or near them.
Heath Ledger is haunting and unforgettable. He deserves at the very least an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of The Joker. He is cruel, vindictive, and very, very smart. He dives into people's minds and turns them inside out, like Hannibal Lecter, and this makes his scene with Batman while he is in custody the very best in the movie. Like Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, Ledger's screen time in The Dark Knight is limited, leaving us clamoring for more of him. All the performances are strong, but Ledger gives us a genuinely disturbed and petrifying display.
It is not perfect. The third act flattens out toward the end as the next movie is set up, and James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer disappoint with another weak score. But it is a classic superhero movie, and a great movie period. I hope it grosses a billion dollars.