Lives up to the hype

Rating: 9/10 (28 August 2008)

I'll be honest when I say that I was one of the first naysayers when I saw the previews for this movie. However, in my defense, Spider-man 3's trailers made that movie look awesome and we all know how that one ended up.
So walking into the theater, I lowered my expectations, and decided that the movie could not possibly be as cool as the previews said it would be.
I was dead wrong.
The movie grabbed me from the start and didn't let go until the final scene, leaving me with nothing to say but "holy crap" I gotta see that again.
Now I've seen my fair share of movies, but very few have even come close to this one. Back a year, when I heard that Heath Ledger was going to play the joker, my first thought was "really, that guy from a Knight's Tale?". But boy, now I can't see anyone else ever playing the Joker again. What I have to applaud is the fact that Ledger had the courage to take a role previously inhabited by Jack Nicholson. Those are some pretty big shoes to fill, and yet not only did Ledger fill them, but he made a pair all his own.
To close out this short review, I just want to say that it was a movie I could watch 20 times over and probably will when it hits DVD. Everything in the film was top quality, with some underrated performances by Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart, but it was Ledger that pushed the film into the stratosphere.