Not only the Best Batman movie, but One of the Greatest Movies Ever Made.

Rating: 9/10 (7 January 2014)

Christopher Nolan's retake on the Batman Movie franchise was met with positive response from both the critics and the comic book fans, Batman Begins was not only a great movie, a fantastic recreation of Batman but a great achievement from Nolan. It is amazing to see the series has so much depth and thought put into it, I am amazed it actually recovered from the abomination that was Batman and Robin.
As great as Batman Begins was The Dark Knight takes everything that made that film great and makes it even better. This resulted in not only the greatest Batman movie ever made (in my opinion) and one of the best films ever made. Now there are people who have raised there grievances and voices against the Nolan trilogy and even the second entry in the series, they are entitled to their opinion, but I believe that the Nolan trilogy is a great achievement, well worthy of the Batman name and the second entry in the series "The Dark Knight is the best out of all of them.
This film has a different take from the first movie, Begins focused on the life of Bruce and how he became Batman, this movie focuses on the villain, The Joker and his mission to turn Gotham City into a madhouse proving that deep down everyone has evil inside them. The storyline is fantastic, and will keep you hooked to the edge of your seat from the beginning to the end. The movie is entertaining to watch and almost everything will hold your attention. However the cliché and overdone dialogue, and there a lot of it in this movie, specially Bruce's dialogues, that kind of dialogue does indeed get annoying and slightly hurts the movie.
Also while the first half of the film did have some unexplained points like how did Joker know that Dent was not Batman? How did Joker exactly set up for Dent and Rachel to be kidnapped after his arrest? If the viewer interprets them he can come up with a logical conclusion, however the second half has unanswered questions and plot holes which I cannot honestly draw a logical conclusion out of like How did Joker bypass Hospital Security and rigged it completely with bombs? How did Joker rig barrels in the boat with bombs, without anyone noticing? And the main question which confused me, why in the world would anyone sane want to work for someone as insane the Joker? A guy who burns money, several of his goons did seem sane in the films, like the members of the mob bosses gangs who switched sides.
I understand the ending and have nothing against it, Batman taking all the blame was necessary for Harvey's legendary image to stay and influence Gotham to permanently take a stand against crime.
Acting wise, this movie is Gold. Regardless of the cliché dialogue as Bruce, Christian Bale does an excellent job playing both Batman and Bruce Wayne and there is a fine balance of the two alter-egos in this movie, it is not like Rises where Batman takes like 45 minutes to make his first appearance in the film. I know people like to make fun of Bale's Batman voice, but he is trying to add a suitable and symbolic voice to Batman, Bale's voice as Bruce honestly would not work well IMO. Aaron does excellent as Harvery Dent, his character is well written, dialogue delivery is also off the charts, he is just natural in his role and his character shift in the second half is just brilliant. I might even say that Aaron even outshines Bale in this film. Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman both plays their roles perfectly.
However it is Heath Ledger who steals the show as Joker with his brilliant and magnificent performance, everything from his written character, facial expression, dialogue, dialogue delivery, make up, costume and even his mission during the film all of it is done almost perfectly heard Slater did a lot of research and hard work on this role and boy did he nail it, this is an Oscar worthy performance and arguably one of the best portrayal of a villain or antagonist in a movie ever. It is a tragedy that Ledger passed away during the end of the development of TDK, but his legend will live on forever and his legendary performance in this film will be remembered for a long long time.
Music in the film is also good and fits all the scenes perfectly, there is also pure silence in scenes which do not need music and it adds to the mood. The small sound effects and the visual effects are also done well and not overused, they make the movie look good and add to the premise rather than being overused.
Some minor plot holes aside, The Dark Knight is a masterpiece, the best Batman film ever made and one of the greatest movies ever, I have watched it multiple times and still feel like going back to watch because it is not only extremely fun and entertaining to watch but is just a brilliant movie. Overall 9.5/10.