Amazing... no... intelligent... no...

Rating: 10/10 (20 July 2008)

Brilliance...
I know everyone uses that word. I know what you're thinking. Yes, it is that good. Someone will find something they didn't like but The Dark Knight is... simply... brilliant.
I don't know how to review this film. There's too much to talk about without a spoiler. The screenplay is haunting and malevolent without Bale and Ledger even tasting a word. The score wowed me unawares. But, I'm not going into specifics or tech stuff. I'm not a fan-boy or a screenwriter right now. No way. I'm soothing in the uncomfortably sexy, priming charge of Nolan's work. It takes a day to settle.
Watching this film had me in a soft and surreal, pleasurable state of excitement and anticipation for an outcome I already know but, in a way, can't predict. I squirmed for two and a half hours. There's your normal story plot and structure but no rules or limits. Anything could happen. You know what's coming but you don't know how. Like trying to get to home plate on a first date with a model. Yes, it can happen.
The Dark Knight is a sprawling epic. However, it's not complicated or cliché at all. The premise is as pedestrian as can be. Bad guy destroys and kills and plunders until good guy stops him.
This is no comic book movie. This a crime story. A detective story. This is LA Confidential with a cowled hero... Heat with two freaks in the lead... Seven without the blood.
The world that this film lays out is intricate and layered and everyone crosses paths in some way or another that completes the tragedy of their own individual tales. Gotham feels alive, real and visceral. This could easily be any real city in the US. The chaos and murder that envelopes here, feels sincere with it's choices and consequences that are, surprisingly, even beyond Batman's grasp. That's where fantasy hits the wall and reminds you reality is steering the ship.
People die. A lot. Some are important to the plot and Gotham itself. Others for no reason at all. This is terrorism at it's best. This is psycho-babble struggling to analyze itself. It doesn't apologize either. No one seen this coming. It's just a comic book movie. Yet another one. It's for kids. It's dumbed down for the masses. Jack is The Joker anyway. Heath Ledger is just a wannabe.
No I'm not. No... I'm not.
THE JOKER has at least ten relevant quotes in the first hour alone. In their context, they are impossibly evil - and yet funny. Somehow, somewhere, someone is making a T Shirt with every fantastical one liner Ledger spat as The Joker. He spits and slobbers through his lines with such quirk and filth you feel nasty watching him. There are evil, little sadistic moments that tinge and stain this film, dramatically stirring discord, melancholy, and angst inside of you until the credits roll. Yes, Ledger is that good.
HARVEY DENT is the hero here, not Batman. Batman is still, very much an outlaw. He is a conflict crash of doubts and hopes, struggling to endure the constant pressure of justice vs revenge. Batman is human, he makes mistakes, has bad choices - a work in progress. Dent is already there. Dent is as selfless, noble and heroic as can be. Eckart's playing his Wyatt Earp/ John Wayne card but Dent is so much more than that. He's a symbol of faith and hope and change. Almost beyond a man. The story pushes the lust of anger, fear, and weakness to whomever who might succumb to it, so much in fact, that even the fearless DA - THE WHITE KNIGHT fights to resist.
BATMAN is the star of the show. He can stand in the background, not utter a single word and still own the scene. To describe Bale's performance is a waste of time. You already know how good he is. If you don't, the world pities you. Batman grows into another type of hero here. The kind we don't really know, or like as much or see as often. He does what is needed for the greater good, effortlessly sliding into the antithesis of everything bright and just that Dent represents. He is now THE DARK KNIGHT.
Gordon, Fox, Rachel and of course Alfred are all so fitting and well balanced that you forget their real names. Alfred is really Michael Caine? You don't say. Who is Morgan Freeman? I dunno, but I can tell you how brilliant Mr Fox is. I can't even reference their latest work in effect to what I've just seen here.
The Dark Knight is (in a lot of ways) similar to The Prestige. It's asking you to look. But not too close to miss the heft of this thing. It's giving you the magic trick and you spend two hours trying to figure it out as The Joker spits all logical reason back in your face.
The trick is to ask someone to describe The Dark Knight in one word. That becomes a ten minute game in figuring terms from eviscerating to riveting to anti whatever - a suspense of diction, inducing fits and chills and lapses in thinking so you can determine what exactly you are processing. To note anti whatever ain't applying here but you don't know that until the end of the game. That is exactly what The Dark Knight gives us. All these plots and spins and what ifs and then erases it all with a question... wait. Wait. What exactly did I just see?
Brilliance...