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Year Released 2008

Duration 152

The Dark Knight

Editorial Review

Christian Bale once again embodies the man behind the mask in The Dark Knight. The film reunites Bale with director Christopher Nolan and takes Batman across the world in his quest to fight a growing criminal threat. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman has been making headway against local crime...until a rising criminal mastermind known as The Joker unleashes a fresh reign of chaos across Gotham City.

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Image: The Dark Knight

Movie Summary

Rated:

M

Director:

Christopher Nolan

Starring:

Aaron Eckhart, Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy, Eric Roberts, Gary Oldman, Heath Ledger, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman


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Editorial Review

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA: that's the delirious sound of your soul being liberated from the shackles of order and morality and sunk into the terrifying, chaotic and entirely beguiling mania of a world without rules. The agent of anarchy is The Joker and Heath Ledger - smeared in the grotesquerie of punk rock clown makeup, scarred with a self-inflicted demonic smile - has transformed him into one of movie's most spectacular monsters.

He's pure Id to a Gotham City riddled with weak ethics, a conflicted caped crusader and a district attorney about to become a vengeful , disfigured freak. Unlike most comic-book villains with their arch agendas, Ledger's Joker is rapturous because he's in it for the simple glee of watching the world tear itself apart.

Such is the power of Ledger's performance that it's sometimes possible to forget all else that's great about The Dark Knight, which picks up from Nolan's excellent Batman Begins and then plunges its characters into an abyss that turns progressively blacker.

Bale's Batman can't help but fade next to Ledger's clown prince, but Nolan has tried to complicate his hero's character even further, making him an outcast which is where he belongs. As Harvey Dent, Eckhart's tragic dysmorphia is a work of grisly prosthetic art; his fatal game of chance underscoring the unpredictability of the film's duelling phantoms.

The film is Ledger's, and not in any kind of scenery-chomping way; this is the lucid horror, the waking state of mental illness painted in epic dimensions. As trite as it may be to say, the gifted actor's death is, of course, a loss that's now all the more devastating - if this was the beginning of a career on the edge, who knows where it may have lead..

Luke Goodsell

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7 comments

Sky: Great Movie, but a bit time consuming (08 August 2008)

Emma:: I'm not a fan of Batman nor of the celebrities but this was an unbelievable movie. Scary as all buggery but fantastic. Heath Ledger did a fantastic scary job and I can understand how people say he got depressed after playing the part. He just did it so unbelievably well (07 August 2008)

Julian: Too long by 40 minutes because they felt it necessary to appeal to the comic book fans by needlessly introducing the two face character. Gratuitously violent as well, says a lot about how desensitised we are when it slips through the ratings board under an M. Would have happily watched a bootleg rather than pay the ticket price. (04 August 2008)

Kat: I am not a Batman fan. I am a Heath Ledger fan. That is the only reason I went to see this film. And, like in so many of his other films (Ned Kelly, Brokeback Mountain, 10 Things I Hate About You, Casanova) I was completely taken in. Ledger gave himself completely to the role, and seeing this film has made me treasure what he gave to the film industry just that little bit more. Ledger, in my mind, is the perfect Joker. He makes the movie his own. (18 July 2008)

Harry Georgatos: 90% of superhero movies are targetted to undemanding teenagers. It's pleasing for once to see a superhero genre targetted to an audience that wants something more then the obvious. There's no clear cut hero or villian. The morality is blurred to such an extent that the conception of right and wrong doesn't exist. Nolan is obviously influenced by the crime drama "THE UNTOUCHABLES" and "THE DEPARTED". "THE DARK KNIGHT" is the best serious comic book movie to film. Nolan is up there with directors such as De Palma, Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg and Michael Mann. I'm looking forward to Nolan's next movie, the cult-classic tv show from 60's "THE PRISONER", which is being adapted to the big screen. (17 July 2008)

B: Heath provides the perfect Joker, the Joker that Batman and Joker fans deserve. (17 July 2008)

beguilie pascale: It rocked my sox (16 July 2008)

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