Checkmate

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2008)

And the dark knight wins.
With Christopher Nolan and his group of strong leading cast, he has proved The Dark Knight to be a sensation. Countless full house midnight and late night screening, rave reviews, strong supporters...it's no wonder that The Dark Knight has proved to be a favorite for most.
Christian Bale is back as Bruce Wayne/Batman again. Together with his butler Alfred (Michael Caine), Lt Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), his inventor Lucuis Fox (Morgan Freeman) and his all time love Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal), he has to fight against his new enemy: The Joker (Heath Ledger).
In The Dark Knight, expect to see more action and personal conflict compared to Batman Begins. Here, The Joker wants Batman to reveal himself using the threats of killing innocent civilians before he creates havoc on Gotham. This has eventually boiled down into Bruce making the decision of revealing his identity. With the introduction of District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who wants to pull down the crime rates of Gotham, Batman has another alliance to fight the crime.
There won't be any dull moments in The Dark Knight. What you get is a 153 minutes fast paced thriller that will keep you going from the beginning to the end. And expect lots of explosion in the film.
One of the main focus of the film is the superb performance delivered by the late Heath Ledger as The Joker. Here, we do not see The Joker commits a crime for the sake of doing so. He is a terrorist that puts Gotham into panic. Using the gangs and corrupted officials to achieve his goal,he wants to challenge, and ultimately, get rid of Batman. And it does not comes with a small price to pay for Ledger to bring Joker to live. In previous interviews, Ledger has done several researches, such as getting close with mentally disabled patients. This has been his best, and unfortunately, his last performance.
WHY SO SERIOUS? : Christian Bale has also make Batman series a success. As Bruce Wayne, he is a smart successor who enjoys life, but also faces his deepest fear when The Joker shows up. As Batman, he will fight against The Joker at any cost. However, apart from fighting against The Joker, he will be faced with another new enemy: Two Face.
I BELIEVE IN HARVEY DENT: Aaron Eckhart makes his Batman series debut as Harvey Dent, an attorney who will fight crime at all cost. Dent is another leading character whose role could be explored further, if not better in the film. Eckhart's role carry a weight to the overall performance of the film, but could be better. This has been Eckhart's best performance in his movie career.
The change of actress for the role of Rachel did not affect the film, as Maggie Gyllenhaal delivers a performance with a punch. Not to forget the contribution of their performances from Caine, Freeman and Oldman too.
Overall, it's worth the 3 years wait for The Dark Knight. And one last thing that we are curious: who is the next villain Batman will fight against?