"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

Rating: 8/10 (22 July 2008)

The night is dark. After a brief period in which organised crime retreated into a minor enterprise, Gotham City has once again fallen into shadow. The Caped Crusader has done all that he could, but, if he is to eradicate corruption once and for all, he will require the cooperation of Lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman), the untouchable honest cop, and Havey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), the newly-appointed district attorney and Gotham's celebrated "White Knight." However, the emergence of a cackling, deranged psychotic, dubbed The Joker (Heath Ledger), threatens to throw the entire city into chaos  how deeply can he corrupt the uneasy alliance between Gotham City's authorities? 'The Dark Knight (2008)' is director Christopher Nolan's eagerly-awaited sequel to his own 'Batman Begins (2005),' which successfully rebooted the Batman franchise and returned some class to the "superhero" genre in general. Unapologetically dark in tone, Nolan's film further explores the split-personality relationship of Bruce Wayne/Batman, comparing and contrasting him with Harvey Dent as he spirals downwards into his persona as super-villain Two-Face.
In terms of character development, 'The Dark Knight' seems to have shifted itself into neutral gear. Whereas 'Batman Begins' portrayed Bruce Wayne's transformation from an angst-ridden, morally-conflicted billionaire to his noble, crime-fighting alter ego, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, who penned the screenplay, here seem satisfied with Batman as the tough, unaffected crusader. Though there is a noticeable shift in how the audience perceives Batman's role in Gotham City  he changes from a righteous champion to a shadowy vigilante, depending upon the needs of its citizens  Bruce Wayne faces few of the moral dilemmas explored into the film's predecessor, and, despite the good work of Christian Bale, his character is not altogether of much interest. Aaron Eckhart undergoes a more interesting (and much more literal) transformation as the "White Knight" who is irretrievably corrupted by the evil psychological games of The Joker. Eckhart is convincing in the role, though his conversion to the "dark side" seemed to have been rushed, and that Batman's final confrontation was with Two-Face rather than the Joker is an unfortunate anti-climax.
Of course, nothing but praise may be heaped upon the late Heath Ledger, whose characterisation of The Joker will be undoubtedly be remembered for decades to come. The Australian actor, long known down here for his performances in 'The Patriot (2000)' and 'Ned Kelly (2003),' passed away in tragic circumstances on January 22, 2008 from an "accidental overdose of prescription drugs." Following his Oscar-nominated performance in 'Brokeback Mountain (2005),' Ledger was at the cusp of the Hollywood A-list, and his performance here  even without the higher pedestal bestowed to those recently passed  would undoubtedly have rocketed his professional career to unprecedented heights. Ledger's Joker, a far cry from the high camp of Jack Nicholson's equally-memorable turn in 'Batman (1989),' is a chilling mix of Hannibal Lecter and Alex DeLarge, a cackling psychopathic clown who, despite his fondness for chaos, frequently engineers his schemes to uncanny perfection. Nolan deliberately avoids any back-story for Ledger's character, though The Joker himself offers two conflicting anecdotes, the result being that his villainous motives are disconcertingly ambiguous.
As in 'Batman Begins,' the soundtrack composed by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer is wonderfully moody and ominous, and Wally Pfister's shadowy cinematography serves the story well. Christopher Nolan's greatest talent lies, above all else, with setting the required mood. The atmosphere of Gotham City is consistently bleak and oppressive, a tone that only intensifies as The Joker begins to leave his mark on its residents. He possesses an anarchistic belief that, at heart, all humans are selfish and corruptible, and his disturbed social experiments  extrapolated from the classic game theory of the Prisoner's Dilemma  are designed to confirm this belief, that, in order to survive, ordinary people will commit seemingly unjustifiable atrocities. Whereas there might once have been a time when the residents of Gotham City would have detonated the opposite ferry, the influence and dedication of Harvey Dent has inspired citizens with a new optimistic spirit. Gotham's White Knight may have been corrupted by forces of evil, but his legacy remains, and that is more great a defeat than The Joker could have anticipated.