darker than ever

Rating: 7/10 (28 November 2008)

'The Dark Knight' is a new and interesting achievement in the career of Christopher Nolan, a director who always tries to do something different, something that surprises and takes films beyond the genres of patterns they are supposed to belong to. Although I do not share the superlatives and I do not think that 'Dark Knight' belongs to the top 10 or even top 100 movies of all times as it is placed now, there are enough interesting things to make it worth seeing.
It's dark times out there and our preferred movies sequels get darker also. 'Dark Knight' starts in a routine comics movie style, with a confusing first quarter an hour until we can make sense of the characters and we start understanding that it's more here than the standard stuff. Sure, we do get a great concentration of acting talents, and just having Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play two supporting (but key) roles says enough. What is however remarkable is that this is a long film, and yet, tension and quality builds in time, and the last half hour is the most interesting of all - not because but despite all the special effects, acrobatics fights and car races. It builds into a destructive and apocalyptic vision, and the frightening thing is that in today's world such a vision is almost credible.
Amazingly for a comics movie, at some point in time we start to care about the characters. The evil character in the film is the most interesting as well, and we can only deplore the fact that Heath Ledger did not live to enjoy the success of this film which is due to a large extent to his acting talent. As the film all over, within the limits of the mask and of the convention, this is almost the best we can get.