Dark is right!

Rating: 8/10 (23 August 2008)

I sat down at the nearest IMAX theater to watch this film in the hopes of seeing a great Batman story. I learned from the movie hype that Keith Ledger's Joker was supposed to be grittier and I loved Christopher Bale in Batman Begins, so I expected a good film. But then, right from the first few minutes until the very end, I experienced something beyond my wildest expectations. This movie was certainly dark. More to the point, it was surprisingly tense. Ledger's performance certainly drove most of the tension. And, you could feel that Gotham was truly terrorized by the Joker's sadistic "social experiments", hands-on villainy and love for knives, gun powder, explosives and gasoline. The tension was also driven by the dark cinematography and booming sound track. District Attorney Harvey Dent and Gotham's finest Lt. Gordan's earlier scenes together added a gritty crime drama element to this movie, while Morgan Freeman's "Q-esque" side kick performance in the bat cave added another dimension that can only be compared to the latest, and grittiest, bond film.
My only gripe, and it's a small one, is that the Joker had no redeeming qualities when comparing him to Jack Nicholson's Joker in the Batman movies of the late 1980's. Yet, Ledger's portrayal as a complex, misunderstood Joker made up for it. He gave us a new joker who did some cold, calculated and down-right nasty things. On the same token, the Two-faced Harvey Dent was considerably more interesting in this movie than Tommy Lee Jones two-face in Batman 3.
All and all, The Dark knight is a deserving remake best described by words such as "tense" and "booming." My hope for the sequel is that they give us a Catwoman that we have always been wanting to see.