Serious Stuff

Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2008)

Falling extremely short of a masterpiece, it would be hard to label 'The Dark Knight' as my personal favorite superhero/comic book adventure of all time ('Superman: The Movie' has always held that spot). If it were just Heath Ledger's masterful, powerful, mesmerizing performance, I would still recommend as one of the best in recent years. However, though Ledger's Joker was so powerful, equal to, and possibly exceeding my favorite villain of all time, Hannibal Lector from 'The Silence of the Lambs,' the movie itself is so great in so many ways, it's hard to list them all in the space provided on this website. The score was powerful, the acting from Oldman, Freeman and Caine were very good, the dialogue excellent  and, at times, hilarious ("I'm going to need your gun." "Why, because my wife's in the hospital?" "Yeah, that would be why." And "You think you can steal half our money and get away with it?" "Yeah.") and the action scenes absolutely intense  well known for very little to no CGI  thanks Nolan, finally a real movie. Sure the audience/box office just eats up the shallow, fake-looking CGI-infested blockbusters ('Wanted' and 'Mummy 3') but finally, someone took heart to real film making. And the heart was throughout this film, script, performances and I consistently forgot I was watching a "comic-book" movie  finally a realistic superhero film. Now, the few bad points  easily a half-hour could've been shaved, i.e. they could've kept the love-triangle while deleting Two-Face and I had no problem with Holmes from the original, but I did with Gyllenhaal, the weakest of all actors. Other than those minor problems, I still award 10 out of 10 stars, label it as the best Batman feature & best film in 2008.