So awesome, they're going to need to come up with a new adjective to describe it

Rating: 10/10 (17 July 2008)

I don't usually write reviews like this. In fact, I generally only do it if a film is either abysmal or mind-numbingly good. The Dark Knight is one of the latter.
There's only one man and one film I can relate this one two, and ironically enough, it's Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin, a film which is despised by anyone with half a brain. It may seem a little odd for me to be making the comparison, but please, hear me out: the reason I'm likening Nolan to Schumacher when they're so far apart in terms of the quality of films they produced that they shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence together is because they both has an astronomical effect on the franchise. Sure, Schumacher's was for all the wrong reasons, but Nolan also takes Batman in directions we never thought possible.
The Dark Knight is the superhero film we've been waiting for since Superman II. In some respects, it's been almost thirty years in the making. One of my favourite writers of all time - Joss Whedon - once related how he saw the trailer to Batman Returns and was disappointed in it because the plot involved the bad guys attempting to frame Batman. If you're the villain, you don't frame your hero, Whedon says. You corrupt him. You take away everything he loves, destroy everything he stands for and drag him down to your level so that even if he wins, you don't lose because he'll be no better than you. And The Dark Knight does just that.
Performance-wise, the first mention has to go to Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, because it's very easy to add him as an afterthought to Heath Ledger's Joker. Like the marketing material says, you surely do BELIEVE in Harvey Dent. He's armed with more charisma than one man should legally be allowed to carry around, a kind of magnetism that comes from a natural leader. Sure, he can seem naive to the point of cheesiness, but it really does work. More, Eckhart pulls it off with a kind of laziness that makes it look easy.
As for the Joker ... well, I think it's safe to say Heath Ledger is going to be the new standard by which film villains are going to be judged. You wouldn't know it was Ledger in the role if you hadn't been told beforehand; I've seen actors immerse themselves in roles - Nathan Fillion in Firefly and Serenity springs to mind - but until I saw The Dark Knight, I had never see an actor sink themselves into a character as far as Ledger did, and it's deeply unfair to see him get all the best lines and most of the best moments.
And of course, Chrstian Bale is far more subtle in his approach. While I would have liked to see a few more scenes with him as Bruce Wayne, I still liked him. And ye, he's better than Michael Keaton. Not in the same way that Heath Ledger is better than Jack Nicholson - there, I said it - but in his own way, adding as much depth to Wayne as to Batman. Meanwhile, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are their usual selves, which is a drawcard in their favour as this film certainly needed stability in the form of those characters. It's good to see Gary Oldman as James Gordon getting something to do and being able to do them himself - something I felt previous incarnations of the character never got to do - and Maggie Gyllenhaal more than makes up for Katie Holmes' performance in Batman Begins (to the point where you have to wonder what both the films would have been like if one of the two stayed for both films).
The Dark Knight isn't a perfect film, but then show me one that is. There's a few minor issues here and there; one sequence that sticks out in my mind is late in the film where we see the film in a kind of super-sonar view, with the end result being that it's jarring, a little confusing and the images and sounds push it to the extent of sensory overload (but it was nearly 2am when I saw it ...). Comparisons to Heat and The Godfather Part II are wholly deserved: The Dark Knight isn't just a superhero film, it's something more by a whole order of magnitude.