Amazing sprawling, epic Blockbuster! A true Masterpiece of the decade!

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 2008)

So today I finally went to see The Dark Knight, and my theater going experience was probable the best I ever had.
The opening of the film is brilliant, a clever way to grab the audience. The sound in my theater was very loud, and the gunshots were very well done, the sound. Anyways, from the start of the film, it does not play out like a superhero film. I thought it was very complex, like an attorney or law film. It certainly grabs you into a world created only by Christopher Nolan. His screenplay lets you wonder into all this crime in Gotham. Every scene helps into characterization to all the characters. The cinematography is amazing. Nolan does not waste any beauty of Chicago, or 'Gotham', go to waste. He plays with the settings, and in a way presents us with beautiful city lights and skyscrapers, in a way that actually no film ever did. The action pieces are all well done, and actually, unlike Batman Begins, they are very well directed and the camera work helps. That's a huge improvement.
Now to an important piece of this film, the acting. Of course, the key performance is Ledger, and what can I say, he does not disappoint at all. What he gives us here is a villain so menacing, so complex, so insane that it ranks up there with Hannibal Lector. Heath Ledger's performance is definitely in the top 5 of the decade, and it deserves to be remembered, and also an Oscar. His facial expressions, his grins, his chilling laugh, his tone, everything is perfect. The other actors also all shine. Performances that I think deserve some buzz too, are Aaaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman. Eckhart, who plays the district attorney Harvery Dent really surprised me. I think since Ledger has been given all the buzz, they forgot Eckhart. Well, he deserves some too, not as much as Ledger, but he really was great. Gary Oldman is an underrated actor, and I also think he shines. Christian Bale does another great job of the hero that people fear and have doubts about. Maggie Gyllenhall, does a better job of playing Rachel Dawes than Katie Holmes, but she is not in the film as much, but does play it very well. Of course, brilliant actors, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman do great supporting performances with their limited time. All the other smaller performances playing cops, detectives, and thugs are all great as well.
What makes this film truly gold is the amazing intense moments and the unpredictability. There are amazing action scenes, but the reason they shine so much is because of how well they are built up, and how all of a sudden they come. More frequently toward the last hour of the film, it takes a lot of deadly turns and places that not many films go too. First off, when Harvey Dent declares he is Batman, and how he is taken in the GPD car, and how The Joker just comes out of nowhere. All of a sudden, the Joker is in custody, and right after one of the most amazingly acted, most intense scenes I have seen in years(Joker interrogated by Batman) we find out not one, but TWO important characters are in danger, and the game Batman has to play is choose one. Well, me already knowing who would die, I was still so nervous, and a lot of viewers were too. They were so captivated and lingered, I wanted to use the bathroom but for an hour I could not stand up. That is the making of pure films. It kept us glued to our seats. The scenes with the two boats, I was so nervous, and in the final scene with Two-face getting Gordon's son and threatening his life, it was so intense, more intense than recent crime movies.
Overall, this is not just the best superhero film ever made, but one of the best films of the decade. I do not think it is one of those films that need to be called masterpieces, because only time will tell, and some people have called it that, and some said it's not. The problem is that The Dark Knight does have some material, like too many characters, too many situations, some unimportant characters, that are it's flaws, but I truly believe that they helped us identify with Gotham more, and even though it has it's negatives, it really does not impact the viewer. The Dark Knight can be called a crime/thriller/mystery/horror/law/action epic blockbuster! It certainly has themes of all those genres, and the reason is because of one truly unforgettably character-The Joker. But the film by itself is also amazing. Probably the funnest, most intense experience I ever had in a theater. Having seen Memento last night, this film is just as amazing as that one in different ways. It is so ambitious, it is a good thing in this case.Deeserves some real Oscar mention, since its more than a superhero film!