The Dark Knight Crushes!

Rating: 10/10 (31 July 2008)

Contradictory to endless super-hyped big budgets films with fancy trailers, this one delivers the goods promised. I have been following this film ever since Lt. Gordon pulled out that fateful card at the end of a brilliant "Batman Begins". Following this trail has been a 3 year affair and as a die hard Batman Fan(atic), I was actually more nervous than excited at the prospect of finally seeing this film. On hand I knew that Christopher Nolan and "Cast & Crew" wouldn't really muck it up but on the other, it takes one greedy studio executive with an ego to decide the fate of the product deliveredthankfully, that was not the case!! From the 1st trailer to the 2nd to the 3rd, the prospect of this film making history becomes more and more apparent. As for the marketing, to have one half of perfectly sane people paint their faces and parade around town in the guise of lunacy coupled with the other half campaigning in their city's for a non existent District Attorney is nothing short of PURE GENIUS! The Viral Campaign (which I followed closely too) made the film all the more intriguing and by the time 18th July '08 came, a final question was still lingering in my mind: Would The Dark Knight live up to the Hype? To my luck and too my wishes, The Dark Knight Crushed! The film-making was Grade "A", the story (which filmmakers have a tendency to go overboard with sequels) was the finest balance that could have been struck between comic and film, the actors were nothing short of amazing and most importantly the product on the whole delivered 100% 30 seconds (literally) into the movie, I knew I was in for the ride of my life and by the end credits, I was ready to go on this ride for the second time. Heath Ledger's Joker shone, just as Christian Bale's Batman did in Batman Begins (and in The Dark Knight for that matter) There are no words that can fully express the magnitude of his performance, but I will say this in a staunchly heterosexual way: "I couldn't get my eyes off The Joker." Aaron Eckhart was superb in portraying Harvey Dent's tragic struggle with duality. The physical scarring looks Dead On! (no pink paint this time round thankfully) Maggie Gyllenhaal made a much better Rachael Dawes the Katie Holmes, probably comes largely from the fact that the character itself is not superfluous like she was in the last one. Michael Caine & Morgan Freeman do tend to make anything look good and this was no exception .A special thanks to Gary Oldman for giving me The Commissioner I've always wanted to see done right. Watching him play Gordan page for page is nothing short of raw pleasure. To the filmmakers, rather than merely supporting their film to the hilt (which I am as you can see) I really would like to genuinely thank Christopher Nolan and Crew for giving me 2 of the greatest films I've seen and for literally bringing Batman's Universe to life. I've seen it 4 times already and am definitely going for 5. There is no guessing how many stars I'm giving this oneI just wish I could give it 11. (or more)