Best Movie I Have Seen In Years

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2008)

I was fairly apprehensive about The Darks Knight going in. Most sequels do not hold up to their predecessors. Batman Begins was a well-done, fresh start to a series that had become campy at best. Let's face it, the last few Batman movies before Batman Begins were plain horrible. Typically, when you have the media jump on a movie for what could be a sentimental or popular angle such as Heath Ledger's death, the movie ends up as a disappointment. This one does not. The plot and underlying themes of this movie are extremely deep. This is one of those rare movies that you can sit for hours analyzing with friends as if you had just read a classic novel full of symbolism and meaning for the time it was written. This movie speaks to the human condition in ways that you would never expect from a movie based on a comic book. It does not take long to completely forget that you are watching a comic book movie, and just find yourself immersed in the moral and emotional conflicts of the characters. I do not want to give much away - so will not go much further except to say, this movie is by far the best, deepest, and most entertaining film of the year - and possibly in many years.
One last note - for those who think that the press on Ledger's performance is over the top, guess again. He gives one of the great all time movie villain performances. This performance makes the "No Country" villain look like a Teddy Bear. You go in wondering how you will feel watching a deceased actor on the screen, but immediately forget about the actor and see only the character. This is not any kind of a disrespectful notion - this was the performance of a lifetime.