The Dark Knight Review

Rating: 7/10 (24 July 2008)

In this review I'll be talking about the whole movie, so if you haven't seen it stop reading as I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. "The Dark Night" beat Spider-man 3 for the biggest box office movie opening ever with 155 million dollars, and after seeing it tonight I can see why. Overall I thought it was a great film. In my opinion it wasn't spectacular, but definitely a great film to watch. Firstly I don't think there are many critics who would refute Heath Ledgers tremendous acting. In all fairness he's probably created a cult character and his portrayal was definitely one that was both sinister and complex. His performance was scary, and uncomfortable to watch (in a good way). The film as a whole was very very dark, and had great action sequences. It had bank robberies, scenes of the macabre, and just all round very unique and original material. It was a great film, great action, very enjoyable.
Now here comes the nit picking. First things first: Scarecrow's return? Scarecrow shows up and batman captures him in practically the first 10 minutes of the film. Why? It took the whole of "Batman Begins" and he still didn't catch him, but yet after literally 2 mins it's done, he's all roped up and ready for jail...Hmmm. Why didn't you do that in the first movie Batman? Why bring a character back if he's only going to be in a film for 10 minutes? It just seemed pointless that's all.
Secondly, for me there were far to many subplots. Batman had to fight four villains in this movie. Scarecrow, The Joker, that guy in Hong Kong who steals all the money, AND Two-Face. It's too much for one film. Hence it's 2 and a half hour length. The sad thing was that this is reminiscent of Spider-man 3 and yet this film is in a different league to Spider-man 3. On that note, I'll bring in Two-Face. His time in this film was exactly like Venom's in Spider-man 3. It was too short and it detracted from the main bad guy which was the Joker. I felt the Joker's character had more than enough to offer without bring Two-face into it. However, it could have worked if he wasn't so easy to kill. Talk about anti-climactic. Kind of irritating but you know...
One final thing that irritated me was Batman's growling voice. Annoying. Why? Don't think I hated the film though I loved it - saw it twice. Batman Begins was better for me as it's simplicity made it more enjoyable. Dark Knight was great but a bit overcomplicated.