An Honest Review

Rating: 10/10 (16 December 2016)

This is one of the Batman movies that was actually really good in a franchise that just had so much awful. And it has been pointed out to me before that I am an easy grader...but the way I see it, movies are made to entertain me. If the film is really entertaining than it deserves high marks, it accomplished it's goal and in that respect "The Dark Knight" earns a 10, it was entertaining from start to finish.
It's not the greatest movie ever made. It's not important like JFK and Citizen Kane were. It's not personal like Platoon and Trees Lounge. But it did come out and do the job that it was supposed to do for the type of movie it was.
And mind you, this is after Batman Begins which was a relief given what happened for the franchise, but really only had one decent second act that promised more than it could achieve.
The same would have happened here had it not been for Heath Ledger...Heath Ledger, right? He was, honestly, the reason that I avoided this film for so long. For starters I thought casting him was insane, especially as a villain that has to be over-the-top. And then when I heard reports about him killing himself because he got too deep into the character, true of not, I assumed it was a train wreck.
And this was, despite of the reviews that I had assumed came from, well, sick demented comic book fanboys like me.
But it was a Batman movie and I am a comic book nerd so....still eventually had to watch it. And it was about that time that I realized how much the sick demented fan boys like me love to trash movie adaptations. The fact that so many of them were not should have told me something.
Ledger gives what was unfortunately the best performance of his life. He was comical and menacingly evil throughout. He was just an absolute pleasure to watch.
In fact, he was so much of a pleasure that walking away he's really the only thing that you're going to remember. Was there another villain at the end? Did a certain DA go bad? It's hard to remember past Ledger's Joker.
That is actually a very good thing given the rest of the film. He did a stellar job of turning attention away from all the aspects that, if you took the time to think about, if you were not distracted by his performance, would have made you hate the film.
He really does shine the bright, he really stood out that much that he redeemed a trilogy that really never found its footing.