Not just a superhero movie, but an accomplishment in cinema history

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2008)

In 2005, British director Christopher Nolan directed "Batman Begins" a re-birth of the Batman franchise where not only fans get to see the dark side of Gotham City, but also the understanding of how Bruce Wayne came to be.
Here, Christopher Nolan wastes no time with the action...
Batman Begins ended with The Joker being the next villain for the next movie, and he, I repeat, he does not disappoint. The late Heath Ledger goes to extreme as the maniacal clown in the beginning of the movie where him and his thugs are robbing the Gotham City Bank; he shows a mean and sadistic side killing people left and right before leaving with the stolen money.
Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), on the other hand, is bringing down the criminals one by one with the aid of Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) while joining forces of the new district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckert). He's also accompanied with his trusted butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) who guides him whether he's Batman or Bruce Wayne and gadgets expert Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who supplies everything that Batman needs to fight crime while at the same time Bruce is trying to rekindle things with his ex-girlfriend/district attorney Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllanhall replacing Katie Holmes) while she's going out with Harvey Dent.
The film itself is a phenomenal from minute one where you can't keep your eyes off of the screen, even touching scenes will get to you. The premise of "The Dark Knight" has The Joker taking Gotham City hostage where he'll execute and hunt down people one by one unless Batman himself surrenders along with those who want to bring down the criminals. In other words, everybody is a ticking time bomb, including Batman and those around him, where the hero must be everywhere before the menacing clown will strike and not breaking his promise.
The action sequences are promising where Christopher Nolan doesn't use much CGI to make it a true extravaganza. They have the sort of "Holy Crap" moments where your eyes don't want to shield away from the rest of the movie along with seeing if others are okay.
As much as acting goes, there was not one flaw in each of the performances. Christian Bale is dynamic as the hero where not only is he playing two personas, but bringing human emotion as both the human and the savior. Oldman, Caine and Freeman have much larger roles where they're part of the action from secrecy to betrayal; Maggie Gyllanhall wasn't a flaw unlike Katie Holmes, and Aaron Eckhart played a convincing Dent, but the true star in this motion picture is Heath Ledger.
Heath, who died at the age of twenty-eight in the beginning of 2008, plays not only one of the sadistic villains ever made on screen but one scary Joker compared to Romero (1960's) and Nicholson's (1989) campiness of the clown prince of crime and Mark Hamill's (animated Joker) cackling voice where there's no clowning around when it comes to blowing up buildings, using school buses to transport money, killing crime bosses and cops left and right to creating madness all around. Hopefully he'll receive a posthumous Oscar nomination for his work making him the first actor in a comic book movie to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Once again, Christopher Nolan does a fantastic job of making a Batman movie where he steps it up a notch along with making it the top DC comic book movie ever made. Now whether you agree with my review or not, I really love "The Dark Knight".
(Note: This is not a typical comic book movie for the young or weak hearted)