The Dark Knight

An obvious improvement over its immediate predecessor, The Dark Knight is a sprawling epic that admittedly does suffer from some of the same problems as Batman Begins (ie overlength) yet there’s little doubt that the movie manages to hold the viewer in rapt attention from start to finish. Director Christopher Nolan – working from a screenplay cowritten with Jonathan Nolan – emphasizes an unexpectedly grim sensibility that pervades virtually every aspect of the proceedings (eg Wally Pfister’s stark cinematography, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer’s moody score, etc), which certainly assures the film’s place as one of the most adult and flat-out uncompromising comic-book adaptations in cinematic history. The storyline – which essentially follows Christian Bale’s Batman as he tangles with a fierce villain called the Joker (Heath Ledger) – has been augmented with a whole host of subplots and periphery characters, as Nolan’s efforts to replicate the style and tone of such gritty forebears as Michael Mann’s Heat and Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy ensure that’s there’s a lot going on within the final product’s 152 minute running time. And to a certain extent, it’s hard to argue that he hasn’t succeeded; though the screen is consistently dominated by larger-than-life figures, there’s simply no denying that the whole thing remains strangely plausible throughout (ie take away the masks and costumes and you’ve got an above-average contemporary crime thriller). The filmmaker’s refreshingly adult modus operandi is primarily reflected in the acting, as, in addition to the expected superb work from Bale, Michael Caine, and Gary Oldman, the movie boasts an absolutely spellbinding performance from the late Heath Ledger. The degree to which he disappears into (and thoroughly reinvents) the Joker is nothing short of staggering, and it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility that his take on the iconic character will find a permanent place within the canon of legendary film villains. Even the film’s action sequences – which were utterly lackluster in Batman Begins – have been improved upon substantially here, and it consequently goes without saying that The Dark Knight ultimately manages to overtake Tim Burton’s Batman as the Caped Crusader’s most enthralling big-screen adventure.

***1/2 out of ****