The Dark Knight

Weeeeell.

This was always going to be a tough one, wasn't it? The hype has been building.
First you've got the hype that you're going to get just because it's a Batman
movie. Then there was the added hype that Heath Ledger was going to be in it,
and the ensuing doubt over his ability to deliver. And then he goes and tops
himself, and the hype rises to fever pitch, as overnight he gets built into
this James Dean figure, and The Dark Knight is going to be the last great work
of a tortured genius. I don't know that any film could live up to that. I don't
think it has. It could have lived up to the hype before his death, I think, but
it just isn't the kind of masterwork that every newspaper and magazine seems to
think it is.

First off though, Heath Ledger is bloody brilliant. His Joker is the kind of
grade A terrifying psychopath on which film careers are built. It's the
skin-crawling equal of Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. 12A rating be
damned, there are going to be millions of 8-11 year olds waking up screaming
after clown nightmares after this.

Plot-wise, having gone and called it The Dark Knight, they've actually gone and
made something that's a close parallel to The Killing Joke. In that what we see
here is a psychopathic criminal whose only motive is to prove that the world is
just as demented and savage as him, if only you scratch the surface a little
bit. It's an exercise in confusion. Twists, tricks, and turns are pulled out
every moment. You don't know what's going on most of the time, everyone
concerned is sort of dragged along in the Joker's wake, barely able to work out
what he's done after he's done it, never mind before. And while that chaos is
exactly what he should be, it does make the film seem messy and convoluted.

Christian Bale, meanwhile, kinda sucks. I'm sorry, but there it is. I actually
like his Bruce Wayne a lot, but his Batman voice sounds bloody stupid in my
view. The script also kinda fails to capture what Batman should be. This is a
Batman without conviction, without finesse, without the spark of genius. He
comes across as a sullen thug hiding behind his body armour. This is especially
bad in a film where it should be a case of a duel of minds between two equal
but opposite adversaries. Batman just doesn't seem to be the Joker's equal
here, and it's hard to see why Batman would interest the Joker at all.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent is actually The Joker's real adversary in this
film, and anyone who's vaguely aware of who Harvey Dent is knows how that's
going to turn out. What's turned out there is actually one of the better
versions of Harvey Dent's story, and it's one of the successes of the film
that they've managed to change and reinvent the character, and come up with one
of the more intelligent and interesting interpretations.

Overall, it's too messy, and Batman himself is reduced to the role of a
bit-player in his own legend. This is The Joker's film, and with such a huge
performance on one side, and such a lacklustre one on the other, the film feels
kind of asymmetrical and lopsided.

I'm going to say 8/10, as it's a film with a performance you really must see,
but it's too full of flaws to rate higher.