If you have not seen The Dark Knight yet, save yourself the 500 words and just go see it right now. Or go ask one of your cool friends who has already seen it. They’ll tell you that The Dark Knight is more important than exercise, sex and really, really good cake.
The biggest summer movie of the year — one that’s probably going to stick with our generation until we’re in the old folks’ home forgetting where our yogurt is — actually delivers. It’s not only a good sequel. It’s so good, it makes the first movie look bad by comparison.
That may not mean much coming from me, who didn’t actually like the first movie, but if there’s a soul on this earth who thinks Batman Begins is a superior film, I will resort to reviewing food, and only food, for the rest of my life. (Warning: not actual promise).
The film, even with a length of more than 2.5 hours, never manages to drag on. I never found myself thinking, “Boy, I sure do have to pee more than I have to see The Joker kill someone again.” Trust me, that scenario just isn’t going to happen.
Also, what is likely going to make this movie one of the more important ones in our lifetime is that it marks the end of an era for Heath Ledger, the first major actor to pass away in our generation. If this film evokes any tears, they are only tears of regret from the realization that we won’t be seeing this actor supreme but in one more film.
There are scarcely words for the simultaneous horror and glee you feel in watching Ledger move about the screen. He is mesmerizing to the point that the word “mesmerize” should never be allowed to be in conjunction with any other actor ever again.
Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent is no slouch, however, especially in the film’s final act where he pulls the finest performance of his career. Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman are given scenes aplenty to shine as the Nolan brothers’ script leaves no narrative stone unturned in its pursuit to create one of the most epic films of the decade.
If I have one complaint to level it’s the same problem I had with the first film: Bruce Wayne is scarcely a character at all, but rather a breathtaking un-entity who has become more Batman and less man. Scenes with Bruce feel shallow and scenes with the Bat feel inhuman. In trying to capture the cold, paranoid Batman I grew up with, they created a character who is simply two-dimensional. The Joker, however, is the logical foil and so it all evens out.
Be you of any age, whether you watch movies or not, you owe it to yourself and to your children to say that you saw The Dark Knight within a week of its release.
