Almost Flawless

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2008)

It's hard to believe how much hype has surrounded this movie, I tried to put as much of it from my mind as I sat down to watch it in the theater. This film is so much more than a Batman movie, its way more than a super-hero movie and it takes the "what if batman existed in a fairly realistic world" idea even farther.
As the title would have you believe the movie is Dark, there is pain, loss, death, and a clever twisted villain named The Joker. Ledger's performance, while I don't know if its Oscar worthy, is fantastic. He creates a Joker with a twisted sense of humor and incredibly sharp mind that kept me both smiling and cringing throughout the film. It really hurts me that Ledger won't be back to reprise the role because he and Nolan have created the best Joker incarnation I've ever seen...
Batman spends much of movie doing detective work in somewhat futile attempts at stopping the Jokers plot, but what he doesn't understand is that the Joker is no ordinary criminal.
The Joker is out to prove something, he's out to prove that the petty sociological and moral rules we as human beings built for ourselves can be easily broken down and therefore proved false. He thrives on chaos and uses the psychological make-up of others to his advantage. He is rarely caught off guard.
After watching the film the only flaws I could see were that Batman did not seem to appear in the film as much as I would liked and that they wasted the villain Two Face (though Dent's demise is never 100% established it is meant to be inferred that he is no longer a threat). After all, Two Face is meant to be one of Batman's main villains and they go to the trouble of telling Dent's story extremely well, why not milk the villain for all he's worth?? All I know is I'm waiting for the next installment and hope Nolan, Bale, and Oldman return... This is one of the best movies in a long time. Its dark, clever, tense, and even funny at times... Almost perfect in almost every way, the Dark Knight surpasses the Super-Hero movie stereotypes...