Love It

Rating: 10/10 (24 January 2017)

The late Heath Ledger completely steals the show in this compellingly dark sequel to 'Batman Begins' What an extraordinary performance this is. It's rare in a blockbuster of this kind for the superhero to be only the second most important character. And to dominate, as Ledger does, almost every scene of a film that also stars Christian Bale and Gary Oldman, terrifically prowling and dynamic alpha men both of them - that's really going some. In recent years, only Daniel Day-Lewis, in There Will Be Blood, has been able to summon up anything like this toxic and intoxicating brew of energy, intensity and seductive demonism; talk of Ledger receiving a posthumous Oscar is not at all far-fetched. The Dark Knight begins with Gotham, as it always must be, on the brink of chaos. Gangsters, decked out in clown clothes in bleak near-homage to the Joker, stage a bank robbery during which they begin to shoot one another to get a larger cut of the money. Very soon, like a malevolent deus ex machina, the only clown left standing turns out to be the Joker himself. He is, it seems clear, a twisted firestarter, a self-proclaimed "master of chaos", a conceptual artist fuelled by a love of anarchy rather than mere money.